


I Keep Telling Myself

by chchchchcherrybomb



Series: The Desperate Type [4]
Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Assisted Suicide, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Slow Burn, Suicidal Thoughts, Underage Drinking, suicide partners
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-18 15:59:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14216685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chchchchcherrybomb/pseuds/chchchchcherrybomb
Summary: It was the perfect plan, Connor had thought. He needed a way out, Evan needed a way out. It was supposed to be simple. It was supposed to distract their parents and get them out of the house. It wasn't supposed to get complicated and confusing.Connor wasn't meant to catch feelings. He wasn't meant to have feelings at all.-----The Desperate Type, chapters 10 to 16, from Connor's POV.





	1. Eighteen Going On Extinct

**Author's Note:**

> As with the original fic, The Desperate Type, please note that there is a content warning for suicide ideation, anxiety, and depression. There's also many instances of self hatred, self destructive thoughts, references to self harm, and implied Borderline Personality Disorder. 
> 
> As with the first fic, the premise is borrowed from the YA novel My Heart and Other Black Holes by Jasmine Warga.
> 
> The title is from a Fall Out Boy song, 7 Minutes in Heaven (Atavan Halen). 
> 
> My deepest thanks go out to murphystarr for proofreading this and being the best cheerleader a grandpa could have, and vinegar-and-glitter for her unwavering support. Thanks to qrimson the irl bestie hugs. 
> 
>  
> 
> This story begins at chapter 10 of The Desperate Type

“Should we go… find something to drink?” The thing Connor really wanted was some fucking drugs, some oxy sounded super great because he got all weird on Zoe after the concert and she had noticed and now Evan kept  _ looking  _ at him and yeah it would be spectacular to check out. But Zoe’s friends seemed pretty square, so he doubted he could score at this party. Maybe weed, definitely nothing hard though. Plus there was this stupid nagging voice in his head saying not to do drugs. The voice sounded like Dave, who Connor was avoiding… and fuck he needed a fucking drink.

 

“Drink?” Evan sounded dubious. Which… okay fair. He hadn’t exactly handled weed well.   


“Come on. Bucket list, remember?”   


“Stop.”   


Connor ignored him. “So you’ve cut class and smoked weed… I think that leaves drinking underage, staying out all night… and…” Connor watched, amused, as Evan’s eyes went big and his face flushed a little. He was an asshole for making him squirm, but well. It was sort of funny and cute and Connor was literally dying here. He had to get his jollies where he could. “Kiss someone, right?  That’s the last thing?”   


Evan gulped audibly. “Yeah.”   


God, Connor was pathetic, the way he was teasing this kid who was maybe even more pathetic. “Well let’s go drink underage, yeah? It might facilitate that.”

Evan struggled through a few sips of beer, each time pulling a disgusted face and eventually dumping it down the sink when he seemed to think nobody was looking. “I would have finished that,” Connor muttered. 

Evan’s face flushed. “Here,” Connor pointed out the garbage can full of wop. “That’ll be sweet at least.”

They sort of floated apart a bit… Connor found himself trapped over by the sink as a pair of idiots from the jazz band made out, blocking his path. Evan, for all of his typical stuttering and shyness, seemed to be half talking to a saxophonist who was also drinking the wop. 

Connor swallowed, remembering how utterly idiotic it was to feel jealous. They’d hugged, once, and like… not even really. Evan was having a panic attack. Besides… Connor saw the way Evan looked at Zoe. He wasn’t stupid, he understood, he got it. 

It took Connor a while to pull himself out of that line of thinking… Only to watch Evan sort of stumble his way to get another drink. Connor crossed the room as fast as he could manage, shouting, “How many of those have you had?”   


Evan rolled his eyes. “Not enough, obviously, I can still hear you nagging me.”   


Connor shifted his jaw a few times, breathing through his nose, reminding himself not to freak out on his suicide partner so that he’d still have someone to kill himself with. He ground out, 

“That has Everclear in it, idiot. Slow down before you get sick.”   


“I feel like suicide partner etiquette means that you shouldn’t criticize my self destructive tendencies.”

If he wasn’t being so fucking irritating and stupid, Connor might have found Evan’s sass cute. But he was being an asshole so. “Whatever. I’m going out for a smoke,” Connor announced. He turned around fast, thinking he ought to get away from Evan before he did or said something moronic, which was sort of all he was good for these days. He clenched his fists, flexing his fingers and lighting a cigarette and telling himself it was stupid to get weird about Evan getting drunk and flirting with other people when the whole fucking point was to get him to kiss someone or whatever. Like. Before he died. He was supposed to help the guy out, not make things weird. 

Connor wasn’t gross or predatory. He wasn’t trying to get Evan drunk to take advantage and kiss him. He wasn’t. 

But that didn’t mean someone else wouldn’t and even though there was literally a ticking clock on both of their lives, Connor didn’t want Evan to. Deal with that. Or whatever. 

Connor was nearly finished with his cigarette when he heard the voice of Jared Fucking Kleinman… He was not drunk enough for this. 

He rushed back into the house to avoid Jared. 

Across the room he could see Zoe’s new hair. 

He frowned, noticing she was apparently making out with someone. Which. Whatever. He wasn’t gonna stick around and see that. 

He turned to go. 

And realized he recognized the person his sister was kissing. 

And. 

Connor felt a bit like someone had punched him in the gut. And he turned, walking toward a staircase. He climbed it, taking the steps two at a time, and barging into a bedroom without knocking and causing two people to shout in surprise. He didn’t even look at them, he just went straight to the en suite bathroom. He locked the door, pulling open the medicine cabinet. 

Nothing to get high on in there. 

The hardest shit was some codeine cough syrup that was two years expired. 

He kept digging. 

“Fuck,” he muttered. There wasn’t anything in this fucking bathroom. No drugs, no sharp  edges, fucking nothing.  

“FUCK!”

He kicked out, his foot colliding with the side of the bathtub. Pain shot up his foot from his toes. He hissed in pain, hands clenched into fists, fists that wanted badly to punch a hole right in this fucking drywall but his idiot sober mind felt badly about property damage. 

Connor caught sight of himself in the mirror and immediately disgusted. He was sweaty and pale and his eyes looked alien and inhuman. He looked like an addict, like an idiot, like someone too stupid to learn not to get his stupid fucking hopes up. 

Part of him was pissed because he didn’t want Zoe getting more fucked up about this whole thing and she was going to be upset if she went around kissing dudes who died with him. That was going to suck for her. He should punch Evan in his idiotic face for touching her, getting near her, like he didn’t know he was a grenade. 

He should punch Evan in his fucking face for fucking with his sister. 

That sounded like a good enough justification… 

He was stupid. 

Maybe he ought to kill himself right now in this bathroom. Leave Evan high and dry. Fuck him, right? Fuck him for making this worse for Zoe. Zoe didn’t need any more mentally ill assholes in her life. Connor knew he was enough for a lifetime. She deserved a clean slate once he was gone.

* * *

 

It took him forfuckingever to find Zoe at the party. So long that he had a few more drinks while he worked, trying to keep the rage bubbling inside him trapped under a calming pool of alcohol. Zoe was drunk, like really drunk, like possibly drunk enough that Connor thought if they were normal siblings he would tell her he was worried, when he found her. But he knew he had no right to throw the fit he wanted to throw, and instead he just tried to talk calmly to her while he wrangled her into Alana Beck’s car. 

“Please don’t puke in Alana’s car,” Connor said to Zoe as he tried to coax her noodle arms ought of the way from the seatbelt. 

“That would be… extremely rude,” Zoe said, like he was the one who was acting ridiculous.    


“There’s a plastic shopping bag from Target if she needs to throw up,” Alana said. 

“Thanks,” Connor muttered, locating it and handing it to Zoe. Or trying. She slapped his hand away. 

“Don’t touch me, asshole!” Zoe shouted. 

“Plastic bags are bad for the environment,” Evan slurred. 

“I can’t go home like this,” Zoe announced suddenly. “If I go home like this… I can’t.”

“Shit,” Connor muttered as Zoe swatted his hand away again as he tried to give her the plastic bag. “Shit, okay… um.”

“You can stay at my house,” Evan said, sounding… nervous. Or something. “But, um, like my mom’s gonna be at home? So we’ll, um, we’ll need to be quiet.”

“Yeah, great,” Connor muttered as Zoe laughed loudly. “Zo, take the fucking Target bag.”

“I don’t need it!”

“Zoe take the damn bag.”

“No I…” She grabbed the bag frantically, throwing up noisily. 

“Gross,” Evan commented. 

“Sorry,” Zoe said. “Sor-” She leaned over, throwing up again. 

“There’s another bag back there,” Alana said. “I try to save and reuse them…” 

Connor fished around for another plastic bag, but it seemed that Zoe was finally finished barfing. He tried to be polite when he thanked Alana for the ride but his main concern was getting Zoe stashed somewhere safe where she couldn’t barf on any valuables or something. 

Once inside, Connor and Evan managed to herd Zoe into Evan’s room, keeping her from pinballing off of the walls or tripping up the steps. 

“Connor why are you being nice?” Zoe asked. He suddenly wished very hard that Evan wasn’t watching this exchange.    


“Go to sleep, Zoe.”   


“Why are you being nice to me? You’re never nice.”   


“I know,” He said heavily. “Go to sleep.”   


“I like the necklace.”   


He nodded. “Good. Night Zo.”

* * *

 

“Sun’s nearly up,” Connor muttered as Evan reappeared with blankets. “That’s your last three things, right? You got drunk, you stayed out all night, you kissed someone.” He knew he was being bitter and shitty and awful, but… He was beat. He was tired. He didn’t care if it hurt Evan’s feelings.    


“Yeah.”   


“Cool,” Connor said. Hollowly. “Good. That… that makes it easier, right?”   


“Um,” Evan said. “I guess.”   


“Great.” Short, clipped. He heard Evan say “Cool,” but he was ignoring him. Turning around, stripping off his hoodie, and pulling the blanket over him before Evan looked at him.    


Connor turned his back almost immediately, refusing to look at Evan or let Evan look at him. He just wanted to stew about this until Zoe was sober enough to take home. He just wanted to forget he existed.    


He felt Evan roll over.    


“Connor?”   


“What?”   


“I’m sorry.”   


“What for?”   


“I just am… For… the thing with Zoe, earlier.”   


“It’s whatever.” It wasn’t. It wasn’t whatever. Evan needed to stay the fuck away from Zoe, Zoe’s life was going to suck enough as it was being the kid with the dead brother, she didn’t need a dead boyfriend. But he was too tired to fight about this. He was too tired for everything.    


“No, it’s not.” 

_ No shit. _

“Connor.” 

Maybe if he pretended to sleep, Evan would drop it. 

“ _ Hey _ .” 

It happened too fast, so fast that Connor couldn’t stop it or resist or yell or hit or shout. Evan reached out, grabbing Connor’s arm above the elbow. Immediately, Evan recoiled. 

He pulled away. He froze. He froze froze froze. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. 

Evan had seen, he’d seen… He got ready to open his mouth, to apologize for being so gross and disgusting and sick but his lips were frozen. 

He felt Evan’s breathing hitch as he said his name. “Connor.”   


“Don’t.” He tried to sound commanding. “It’s fine.”   


“Are you… You’re doing that to yourself.”   


Obviously. Obviously. Who else hated Connor as much as he hated himself?   


“Why?”   


Connor rolled over, facing Evan in the gray watery morning light. The light was casting strange, scary shadows in all of the corners. Connor’s heart was racing. He waited for a moment, just a moment, to see Evan repulsed, creeped out by his disaster. 

And when it didn’t happen, Connor pulled his arm out from under the blanket. Daring Evan to say something, challenging him. He looked horrified or sad, Connor didn’t know. He couldn’t read Evan’s face. 

“I thought suicide partner etiquette means that you shouldn’t criticize my self destructive tendencies.”   


“How long has that been happening?” Evan asked. His voice was shaking.    


“A bit.”   


“Are you still doing it?”   


“Evan.”   


“Well  _ are _ you?”   


“Yeah. Sometimes.”   


“Doesn’t that hurt?”   


Connor smiled bitterly. “That’s the point.”

He watched something flicker in Evan’s face and braced for impact. For more disappointment, for the crashing realization that he couldn’t trust this kid. 

Evan reached out and touched his arm. Skin to skin. Rough hands gentle on rough scars.   


“Don’t,” Connor choked out. He could barely hear over the way his heart was racing.

“I’m sorry.”   


“I don’t care if you’re fucking my sister, Hansen, just as long as you’re still planning to die with me,” Connor spat. He needed that hand off of his arm, he needed Evan to stop looking at him like that before his heart imploded.    


“I wasn’t talking about Zoe.” He said it defiantly. 

He. 

He wasn’t expecting that, he was taken aback, surprised, and he. Something happened. Like a pressure in his chest, one that had been there for forever just deflated. Like he stopped holding his breath for the first time in so long that he’d forgotten he had been holding it, like he was possessed because that wasn’t the sort of sound he made.    


“I’m so sorry,” Evan whispered.   


“Please don’t…”   


“I'm so so sorry.”   


" _ Don't _ ."   


When had Evan gotten so close? Or had he gotten closer? He should pull away, he was too close to Evan’s face, this was weird, this was gay and weird and awkward, he was too close to this whole thing, this explosion in waiting. He needed to roll over. He needed to jerk his arm out of Evan’s. He needed to die because if this was living it was far too much that he could have imagined and he didn’t want it.    


“The sun’s coming up.” Evan’s voice was hoarse, ragged. His eyes were glassy. They were way too close to each other. Connor could close the gap in seconds, but he couldn’t actually do that. Evan had kissed Zoe tonight, Evan liked  _ Zoe…  _ Connor was just a means to an end. A way to get this whole bullshit over and done. He couldn’t do that. He couldn’t close the gap, even as it grew smaller and a tear dripped over the bridge of Evan’s nose and down the other side of his face. Connor fought the urge to wipe the tear. To close the gap. 

Means to an end. 

He tried to push Evan away, but instead found himself holding Evan’s hand, which was warm in his cold hand. “I’m so tired,” Connor said when he tried to say, “Get away from me.”   


“We should sleep…” Evan said. Somehow their knees were bumping up against each other, kneebone to kneebone, kind of painful but Connor couldn’t seem to make himself move away. 

“We should.”

_ Fuck it.  _

Connor closed the distance. 

Or maybe it was Evan.

He didn’t know. 

Somebody did.

Fuck it.

Evan’s lips were warm and soft. His stubble scratched against Connor’s skin. He tasted like Koolaid and he kept his eyes closed. He had long lashes and his nose pressed against Connor’s cheek. Everything felt warm and soft and nice and safe, but… Evan had dark circles under his eyes that stood out against his pale skin in the halflight of sunrise. He had lines in his forehead from frowning and he was only seventeen. He was young and warm and tired.

“Go to sleep,” Connor heard his own ragged voice say when they parted. Evan nodded sleepily, never opening his eyes, but keeping their fingers firmly tangled together. 

Fuck. 

_ Fuck _ .

Fuck.

His eyes itched and stung as he watched Evan’s breathing even out. He wanted to fight the way his body begged for sleep, his eyes watering and his shoulders and back aching, his fingers, toes, and nose cold. He was shutting down. 

Evan was asleep but holding his hand. 

This wasn’t supposed to happen. 

Fuck.  

* * *

 

Eventually, he fell asleep. His tired body won out, he surrendered to the itching in his eyes and the aching in his shoulders. 

When he woke up it was bright, too bright, brighter than his bedroom and it took a moment to realize that he wasn’t home, wasn’t waiting out the brightness of morning at in his bedroom. He was crammed into the hard corner of a pull out couch, a soft and warm blanket over him, his hair in his face, dirty and greasy and. 

His memory took a second to catch up and suddenly he felt his face flush, heat up, burn. He was on fire. He’d just woken up, his entire body was on fire. 

Connor’s first thought was how pissed Zoe was going to be at him for kissing her… whatever. He was a shit brother. Always stealing her stuff. He had a pack of hair ties he’d taken from her in his top drawer and a collection of gel pens from when they were kids. He was always taking away the things that made her happy. He was an asshole, he was such a shithead, he was…

_ “The sun’s coming up.” _

Connor burned with embarrassment, thinking about Evan holding onto his mutilated and disgusting arm, their bony knees colliding painfully but neither of them moving away, Evan holding tight to his hand as he fell asleep. Long lashes, scratchy stubble against cheek. 

His whole body was alight with… shame. Fear. Delight. Thank god he was alone. 

Connor swallowed. He knew he couldn’t crawl off of this pull out bed in his current state. God, this was embarrassing. He was an idiot and his body was somehow even more fucking stupid. He blinked sluggishly, hating himself for sleeping in his contacts, trying extremely hard to just… ignore everything happening below the belt… even though he had taken his off before falling asleep, so it was probably beside his shoes and hoodie on the floor. His eyes felt like they were wrapped in cellophane. 

Thinking about eyes.

Thinking about eyes was a decent alternative to thinking about any other part of himself.

Fuck.

He could hear the quiet sound of keyboard keys being tapped. Connor turned his head slightly, and he could see Evan sitting in the kitchen, frowning, looking at a laptop screen. 

And then he stayed perfectly still for several long minutes, willing his boner to just go away because Jesus fuck.

Connor took a deep breath and then… adjusted what needed adjusting, before he crawled awkwardly out of the pull out bed, cursing his long limbs as they got tangled up in the sheets and blankets. Turned out, he needed to adjust himself again anyway. 

Fucking. 

Hell.

He pulled on the hoodie he’d thrown on the floor and pulled his belt back on, wondering stupidly what his parents had done with the belt he’d tried to hang himself with in September. 

Evan hadn’t looked up from the computer, mercifully. There was something especially pathetic about the idea of Evan watching him drunk baby giraffe-ing his way out of a bed. Connor took a second to try to smooth out his hair a little and straighten the clothes he was wearing before stepping toward the kitchen. 

He made sure to make some noises, coughing and clearing his throat so Evan would notice he was up.

“Aren’t you hungover?”

Evan jumped, his face turning pink. 

“Sorry,” Connor mumbled. “I tried to make noise when I got up so I wouldn’t startle you.” God, he was such an asshole. 

“It’s okay,” Evan said. 

“Zoe still out?” Connor asked. 

Evan looked stricken.“Wha-? Oh, yeah, she’s still asleep. She’s breathing, I checked, because she hadn’t moved in a while when I went in to grab a change of clothes before I showered but she was definitely breathing so she’s just sleeping in.”

“Hm.” What the fuck was he supposed to say to that?

Evan wouldn’t look at him. 

Fuck. 

Evan just picked at the hem of his shirt and Connor wanted to just… Disappear into the floor. But, being stupid, he said. “Last night…” He kept his eyes on his feet like somehow that might lesson the awkward.

“I’m so sorry,” Evan said quickly and when Connor looked up, Evan was blushing and look completely embarrassed. “I can’t believe that I did that, I didn’t even… I’m _ not  _ even…I’m sorry.”

Connor shook his head. “No, no. It’s fine. It was…”  He felt a weird, bitter smile trying to climb onto his face. He tried to turn it into a frown. He pulled the sleeves of his hoodie back over his hands. “It can’t change anything.”

“Okay…?”

“I mean,” Connor started, staring hard down at his feet because if he looked at Evan, probably pitying him and thinking how fucking pathetic he must seem.  “We’re still… at the end of the month?”

“Oh,” Evan said. “Yeah.”

“Good.”

Silence stretched out over the kitchen. Connor kept watching his toes. Evan, tentatively, started up typing again.

“What are you working on?”

“Scholarship essay contest. My mom is obsessed. And the deadline on this one is today.” He sounded annoyed.

“Oh,” Connor said, frowning. 

“It’s just… she’s getting sort of suspicious,” Evan explained, definitely sounding bitter and embarrassed. “She kind of freaked out on me this morning for being out so late and bringing you guys back.”

Shit. The last thing he wanted was to get Evan into trouble with his mom. “Oh. That sucks.”

“Well she thought you were a  _ girl  _ so…”

Connor laughed nervously, because. Well. Alright. Sure. “Fuck, man, that’s a real hit to my masculinity,” He tried to joke and he knew it was stupid because Evan’s laugh was forced and weird and this was fucking mortifying.

Neither of them said anything for a long moment, but when Connor looked at Evan again he was blushing really dark, and.

Oh. 

Was he… nervous too? Like regular, typical, normal people nervous because they kissed and hadn’t really talked about it? Was that what was happening?

“Is there any chance you have a spare toothbrush?” Connor heard himself asking, feeling bolder than he had any right to be. “I kind of feel like there’s moss growing on my teeth.”

“Gross.” Evan smiled. It knocked him out.

“I-I know right?” Connor said. 

“I think we have a spare,” Evan said, standing up. He disappeared down the hallway. 

He swooped into Evan’s seat, feeling suddenly self conscious because the seat was warm from Evan sitting there and how fucking weird was it to be thinking about Evan’s butt right now? He felt too keyed up, too tuned into whatever was happening with his body, his heart hammering stupidly against his stupid ribs.

He needed to do something where he didn’t think about Evan’s butt (which was nice, of course, but now was not the time). 

So he started reading the thing Evan was typing. 

_ The choking sensation that accompanies each new failure, the ache of hunger because you just can’t foresee how to cope with watching a delivery driver count out change, the sweat slick palms with each new person you could make a connection to if only your hands could stop sweating long enough for you come up with words to say, the haunting feeling that nothing you say matters; all these agonizing truths of my life that struggle to express are just some of the things I... _

“Found a toothbrush,” Evan said, startling him. And then a second later, “Don’t read that!” 

Connor looked up, feeling caught.

“It’s… don’t, okay? It’s stupid and it’s just to get my mom off my back, okay, it’s all... It’s all made up. Pretend.  _ Bullshit _ . Okay? Just don’t… don’t read it.”

He needed to… to fix this. He needed to…. He was biting his lip and Evan was staring and looking freaked and just. He cleared his throat. “I was just going to say that… that you’re a good writer.”

“Oh,” Evan said. He literally appeared to relax on the sput. “You think?”

“Yeah.”Connor tugged on greasy piece of hair, hard, trying not to say the next thing that came to mind and failing to stop it. “Then again, I thought that when I read your paper on Daisy Buchanan last year.”

“But I…” Evan stopped, his eyes narrowing. “I never finished that presentation. I actually… I had to go to the hospital after that.”

“Oh.”

“You read it?”

Connor felt his face get warm. He was such a fucking creep and now he’d just fucking told Evan how weird he was. “You left your copy at the front of the classroom. I kept meaning to return it but…” He shrugged. He just… he’d sat through the aborted presentation, feeling like shit, being mad when the other kids in the class started tittering with laughter, because obviously this kid was like having an anxiety attack. But after he watched Evan bolt from the room and the teacher try to get everyone to stop laughing and being assholes, telling the next kid it was their turn to go and give their presentation. 

After the bell rang and the teacher rushed off, probably to see where the hell Evan Hansen had ended up, Connor noticed that Evan’s paper was still sitting on the table at the front of the room. He grabbed it, stuffing it into his messenger bag and promptly forgetting about it. 

He spent a lot of last year high on oxy though, and when he was chilled out and bored he went into his bag to try to find his cigarettes and found Evan’s essay… And he read it. 

The writing was clear and good and he made some decent points about Daisy Buchanan.

Back in the present, Evan was staring at him, and he didn’t know precisely how to explain he was high on serious drugs and had fostered a weird soft spot for Evan in their shared AP English class when he had softly pointed out one day that reading  _ Heart of Darkness  _ was pretty racist. Connor shrugged awkward, trying to like, laugh or something.  “Like what kind of psycho holds onto someone else’s English paper? I didn’t even like, rip it off.” He shook his head. He didn’t need to rip the paper off. He was good at English. The only thing he was good at, really. He liked books. ”I read it though. It was good.”

“I didn’t even know you were in my class,” Evan admitted.

Connor shrugged. “It’s not like I showed up a lot.” He actually showed up to that class more than most, but. Still. 

Evan smiled vaguely at him, like he was trying not to condone skipping class or something. Nerd. 

A moment passed. 

“Toothbrush?” Evan said.

“Oh, great, thanks.”

He rushed off to the bathroom so that he could take a moment not to stare at Evan Hansen’s stupid cute face. Once locked in the bathroom, Connor peed and tried for like a fucking second to have a conversation with his body to fucking cooperate for like. Ten minutes. Just. For fuck’s sake. 

He brushed his teeth, carefully, in circles, making sure to get the back teeth and tongue. Even though that made him almost gag. 

When he finished, Connor tied his hair up into a messy bun, and then washed his face with some facewash he stole from the cabinet, just to try to remove the layer of grease from his face because that was… unattractive. Not that he was, like, deluded enough to think that he was attractive in any way… Just. Trying to mitigate the damage. 

He rinsed his face and dried it quickly on a hand towel, his face still kind of damp but at least clean. 

He took a deep breath, avoiding the mirror, trying to psych himself up. The walk back took like. Way too little time. 

“Hey,” He said, his voice kind of wobbling. Evan was leaning back against the counter now. 

“Hey.”

Feeling bold or stupid, Connor took a step closer.  His voice really shook when he said, “So... last night?”

“Yeah?” Evan said, his voice quiet. 

Connor licked his lips. “Can we… try that again?”

Evan’s eyes went so wide, like he was a cartoon or something. “Oh. Yeah.”

“Okay.”

The last time he had kissed someone, Connor was locked in a bathroom stall in rehab, and Jason, the guy, was older and mean and usually high. He never looked happy to be kissing Connor, but like he was doing something required. Like an essay that was due, or a shot he needed to get from a doctor. 

Evan was looking at him… looking. Like he was waiting. Like he… actually wanted to do this. 

Connor took another breath, and carefully stepped closer. He was scared, suddenly, that he was going to hurt Evan… he’d punched walls and broken mirrors and jaws with these hands. So he was especially careful, kind of putting his hands gently as he could on either side of Evan’s face. He started to tilt his head, to move in closer, and Evan’s eyes fluttered closed and. 

He couldn’t do it. He was chickening out. There was no fucking way Evan wanted to kiss him, he was… 

He blew out a breath he didn’t know he was holding to see Evan’s eyes looking at him quizzically. And he smiled sort of sheepishly because, fuck, he couldn’t rely on his reputation with this kid because Connor wasn’t Connor around Evan he was… stupid and soft and idiotic. 

Fuck it. He leaned down and kissed him. 

And noticed, smiling into the kiss, that Evan was on his toes so he could meet Connor’s lips easier, and he was pulling Connor closer, his arms around Connor’s neck, and Connor felt himself like erupt in goosebumps. He moved his hand to the back of Evan’s neck, where the hair was short and velvet soft, and he moved the other hand to the small of Evan’s back, pressing him even closer. Evan tasted like coffee and mint toothpaste, and his lips were extremely soft but the stubble above it was like… knives, it was sharp and painful, and Connor didn’t care, he couldn’t get enough of it. He knew Evan hadn’t done a lot of kissing, and not like he had either, but he was a fast fucking learner because after maybe a minute of kissing he was… definitely. Good at it. 

He doesn’t have a chance to be embarrassed about his own fucking reaction though because Evan pulled him even closer and apparently… apparently this was working for him too.

They broke apart when Connor felt like his top lip might go numb, when he was afraid he was holding his breath. 

Evan laughed, but not like… at him. He was blushing, and without even seeming to realize, he tucked a strand of hair behind Connor’s ear, and Connor was about to dip down and kiss him again when a noise startled him. 

“Guys?” Zoe’s voice. 

Fuck fuck fucking fuck. Connor backed quickly, until his back was against the opposite wall. 

Zoe looked like shit when she walked in, super obviously hungover, makeup all over her face and her hair a crayola factory disaster. “Hey. Thanks for letting us crash here, Evan.”

“Don’t mention it,” Evan said. He didn’t… or maybe  _ wouldn’t _ or  _ couldn’t _ look at Zoe. “Connor, we should get going before mom and dad get worried,” She said. 

“Yeah,” Connor said, hurrying out of the kitchen. “I’ll get my shoes.”

Zoe and Evan went into his room to talk, and he didn’t want to fucking think about it. He 

just. Whatever. It was stupid. They were up there for a while, so he just. Cleaned up the pull out bed, folded up the blankets. It didn’t distract him as much as he’d hoped. 

He and Zoe had to walk back to Brenna’s to get her car. The walk wasn’t as horrible as he’d expected; the car ride had seemed longer in the dark. 

“Hey,” Zoe said, like, five minutes after they left Evan’s house. “Um. Did you have fun last night?”

Connor stared at her. “Sure. I guess.” He shrugged. “Did you?”

She nodded. “I blacked out though. I didn’t know where I was this morning.”

“Yeah, Alana Beck had to hold your hair back while you barfed last night.”

Zoe’s face went pink. “Shit.”


	2. Like Real People Do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connor and Larry have a chat. Connor and Evan have a sleepover. 
> 
> Best read with chapters 12 and 13 of The Desperate Type.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from Hozier's "Like Real People Do."

As if his day wasn’t enough of a heaping pile of shit, Connor had been called into the school shrink’s office right in the middle of English class. Like, of course it couldn’t be one of his other classes, one he didn’t actually like. 

Then again, English was basically the only class he managed to make it to most days of the week. Maybe the school shrink was crafty and observant. His teacher wrote him a pass, and Connor caught Evan watching him as he hitched his messenger bag over his shoulder, took the pass, and left the room. 

The school psychologist, Ms Quale, had an office off of the cafeteria, in a shared little pod with all of the guidance counselors. He was required to see the shrink every few months because of some deal his parents had struck (or probably paid for) when he got caught smoking pot on school grounds in the middle of his junior year. 

She was weirdly young for a teacher-type, Connor always thought. Like the clothes she wore looked like something Zoe might have worn. Her hair was always super shiny and styled in these waves that Connor suspected she spent ages trying to make look perfect in the morning. He played with a piece of his hair for a second. It was dull and greasy and he’d forgotten to brush it that morning. 

“Hello Connor,” said the school shrink said when he got to the little weird waiting area. She’d been waiting. “Come on back.”

He obeyed, grabbing a seat on the other side of her desk, slouching while he waited for her to get down to business. 

“I wanted to talk about your progress report,” Ms Quale said pleasantly. “How do you feel the semester is going so far?”

Connor shrugged. “Fine I guess.”

“Sorry to call you out of English,” She said. “I know it’s AP, but I’ve gotten reports from a few teachers that sometimes you don’t come to calculus or botany.” 

Connor kept his face expressionless. So what? It didn’t matter if he blew off all of his classes. None of this mattered. 

“Sooooo….” She went on. “It actually looks like your grades are up so far this year. All As and Bs, just one C from your calculus teacher.” That checked. Connor thought he had missed a quiz last week. She put down the sheet of paper she was holding and said, “But I still see that you’re not always coming to class.” He stared at her blankly. She began shuffling around the wall behind her desk, pulling out a pamphlet that read “TEEN DEPRESSION” in block letters. Connor stared at it as she pushed it toward him. 

He looked up at her, face blank. 

“I wanted to chat with you about, you know, mental health.” Ms Quale was giving him this toothpaste commercial smile. “I’ve chatted with your parents about it a few times, but from my understanding your dad’s not exactly keen to explore options like therapy…”

Connor scoffed. “I’m in therapy now.” He was. Since rehab, he went every two weeks. His doctor was nice but he lied to her all the time because he wanted to kill himself and frankly there was no point in trying to fix himself up anymore. He was too far gone. 

“And how is that going?”

Connor shrugged. “Fine, I guess.” He crossed his arms across his chest. 

“Well, I thought… since you’re over eighteen now,” She smiled awkwardly like she was debating if she ought to stop and wish him a happy birthday. She didn’t, thank god. He spent his birthday meeting Evan for coffee so they could die together. “That I might bring up the idea of medication with you directly.”

“Why?” Connor asked. He already knew he was fucked up, but other than a brief conversation about it in middle school, it seemed that all of the grown ups thought he wasn’t sick enough for meds. 

Ms Quale looked a little confused. “Connor, I’ve spoken to your parents about this a number of times. In all of our meetings, it seems pretty clear to me that you… That you’re not feeling as well as you could be. I’ve been urging your parents you consider taking you to a psychiatrist and considering medication since your freshman year, and your father has been. Particularly. Resistant to the idea.” She set a piece of paper down on her desk. “I… If you think you might need help speaking to them about this, I did-” Connor had snatched up the paper already, reading fast. 

_ “After talking with Connor a few times, I would really appreciate if I could have a meeting with both of you. I know last we spoke, Mr. Murphy was very resistant to the idea of medication, and I would like very much to revisit the issue. Connor’s grades have improved this semester, but his attendance is still very sporadic and in our conversations it seems apparent to me that, in my professional opinion, assessment from a psychiatrist is necessary. Connor would benefit greatly from medication in addition to therapy since he is displaying symptoms of clinical depression. I would greatly appreciate the opportunity to speak with all of you about this situation as soon as possible.” _

Connor looked at the paper blankly, his mind failing to process the words at first.

“My…” His voice was coming out strangely calm even though inside he was raging, he was breaking everything in this office, he was burn everything to do the ground. “My dad? He… I know he didn’t want me going to therapy, but he told me. He said. He.” He exhaled through his nose, feeling very much like a pot about to boil over. “He said there was nothing wrong with me, he said I was just… I just wanted attention.”

Ms Quale’s pretty perfectly made up face looked stricken. “I’m so sorry Connor, I… Maybe this will help?”

The bell rang then, and the hallway behind them erupted in noise. 

“May I please go back to class?” The vaguely pleasant voice that came out of his head was adding ten points to Connor’s internal tally of reasons why he might actually be a sociopath. 

She nodded, scrambling for a pen while she wrote him a late pass. He clenched it roughly in his fist and stomped off to his next class. He was numb, just numb, just out of it until passing period between seventh and eighth hours when seeing Evan snapped him back into reality. 

“Do you want to go somewhere? After school?” He asked him. 

Evan looked a bit startled, his face pinched and forehead creased. He nodded. “Sure.”

Connor headed to his last class of the day. He kept opening and rereading the letter from his counselor, kept folding it back up until the creases wore into the paper to the point of tearing. 

Evan met him in the parking lot, his hands wrapped tightly around the straps of his backpack. He smiled a twitchy smile at Connor when he walked up. Connor just… didn’t have it in him to talk. He felt hollowed out, he felt empty, he felt fifteen seconds from exploding. 

He thought to himself that he ought to drop Evan off at home. Apologize for inviting him somewhere, say something came up, and just… Deal with his dad when he got home. 

But that sounded like a rational person, something Connor was definitely not. 

They drove in silence for a while. Evan looked awfully pale and Connor was trying to make himself care about that, but he sort of had a one track mind at that moment.

“Where are we going?” 

“I have something I need to check off of my bucket list,” Connor said lowly, merging onto the interstate. His brain flashed to the time his dad made him drive home from a family vacation when he still had his permit and he and Larry got into such a big fight that Connor jumping out of the car on the shoulder of a four lane highway to have a screaming match about turn signals. At the time it happened, Connor had genuinely debated just walking right into traffic, right into someone going 75 miles per hour, just to show his dad what he thought of turn signals. 

And yet his dad thought he just wanted attention. 

Connor gripped the steering wheel hard, taking a few steadying breaths, trying to remind himself not to snap at Evan, not to take this out on Evan. 

“Did something happen? You seem off…”

“Nothing ever happens to me,” he mumbled, rolling his eyes.

“What’s your favorite color?” Evan asked him a second later. 

“The fuck?” Connor blinked rapidly, surprised.

“Your favorite color. You h-haven’t told me, and I, uhm, I realized that I didn’t know and you see the thing is that I… I know it’s stupid, I know, it’s really dumb and I’m s-sorry I asked, it’s just… I just want to know what your favorite color is because you know, we’re… we’re doing this, whatever this is, we’re suicide partners and and I just, it’s just that I want to know what your favorite color is sorry.”

Connor looked at him quickly before returning his eyes to the road.

“Sorry, that’s so weird I’m sorry,” Evan rambled. 

“Knock it off with the sorry shit.”

“S-”

“DON’T!”

Fuck  _ fuck  _ fuck. He didn’t want to snap at Evan, Evan was just… nice and normal and kind and  _ fuck _ . He was so fucking horrible to everyone, even the people who were nice to him. It wasn’t like a parade of people, but for fuck’s sake, Connor thought that maybe eventually he’d learn to be nice to the handful he got. 

He looked quickly at Evan again, frowning. Evan looked at him with this weird, sad look on his face. Connor didn’t love the look. But he did like the eyes. Evan had nice eyes, kind of blue, kind of green. It depended on what he was wearing. 

“It’s green,” Connor said suddenly.

Evan looked over at him, shocked. “Green?” 

“Yeah. Green.”

Connor turned the radio on, too loud to talk over. He didn’t ask Evan’s favorite color. He didn’t ask anything because he was terrified about that sad look on his face coming back, and terrified that he was going to keep putting it there.

* * *

 

He drove into the city by memory, turning down sidestreet after sidestreet until he got to the parking garage attached to his dad’s office building. “Come on,” Connor said after he parked. He led Evan across the skywalk and up to Darla’s desk. He did his best to smile at her and hoped to god she remembered him. 

The way she reacted seemed to indicate that she did. But thankfully not recently. “Connor! Sweetie, I haven’t seen you in two years, how are you?”

“I’m alright.”

She hugged him. He tried his best not to recoil. He used to like saying hi to her when he was younger. She usually kept jelly beans at her desk, no matter what time of year it was. 

“You’ve gotten so tall!” She said, smiling. She had lipstick smeared on her teeth. She was exactly the kind of nice person that stupid bad stuff happened to. “How’s senior year? You thinking about colleges yet?”

“Sent off a few applications, yeah,” He said, smiling and straight up lying to her. He listed off the same bogus list he’d given to Ms Quale and his parents when they harassed him during the week he spent in the hospital. 

“Well, good luck. I’m sure you won’t need it. You’ve always been so studious. I remember that summer you were thirteen, always hanging around your dad’s office, reading everything you could get your hands on.”

He’d been beyond grounded that summer. And his parents had decided to punish him by taking all of his books away, donating them. He was so bored that summer that he used to steal law journals and periodicals just to do  _ something  _ other than think about dying. 

“Yeah….” He shoved his hands into his pockets, then said, “This is Evan, by the way.”

Darla gave her a somewhat knowing look which sort of made Connor want to die. “Nice to meet you. I’m Darla. I’ve worked for Mr. Murphy since Connor and Zoe were in diapers.”

“Nice to meet you,” Evan murmured.

“Is it alright if we go up?” Connor asked, forcing his voice to sound casual.

“Go on ahead, I’ll buzz you.”

“Thanks Darla.”

“We’re at your dad’s office?” Evan was fidgeting with the hem of his shirt, looking like he was trying to shrink himself smaller.

“Yep,” he said popping the “p” sarcastically. They didn’t talk the whole ride up, and Evan just sort of anxiously trailed behind him once Connor stepped off the elevator.

“What’s going on?” Evan hissed at him.

“Shut up.”

So much for not taking this out on Evan. 

Add another point to the sociopath tally.

He marched right up to his dad’s office door, pounding on it roughly until he heard his dad’s voice call, “Come in!” He always sounded so pleasant and happy before he spotted Connor. 

Connor walked in quickly. 

“Connor! Evan! What are you two doing here?” His dad was doing that thing where he acted like he was pleasantly surprised, but it was totally obvious that he was pissed off. 

“We were in the area,” Connor said, voice light and fake. He watched his dad’s face darken when he shut the door. He pulled the letter from his bag. He announced, “Got my progress report today.”

“And how does it look?” Larry was frowning.

“Well there’s a note from the school psychologist,” Connor said, his voice starting to shake a little. “ _ Dear Mr. and Mrs. Murphy…” _

Naturally Larry interrupted. “Son, can we do this at home? I’m buried under a pile of work.”

“It’ll just take a second,” Connor said, cutting him off. Evan glanced nervously over at him, but Connor just read until he got to “- _ since he is displaying symptoms of clinical depression-” _

“Enough! I’m not doing this now, Connor, we’ve  _ talked _ about this.”

_ You _ don’t want me medicated? That’s the reason?”

Larry fell silent.

“You told me that the doctors thought it wouldn’t make a difference.”

“I-”

“You…. you  _ lied _ to me. You told me that I just wasn’t trying hard enough, that I was just lazy and doing… doing everything for  _ attention _ .”

His dad started to stand up, “Connor, I’ve read the literature about antidepressants-”

“I’m eighteen!” Connor heard himself shouting. “She… the-the shrink only told me because I’m eighteen… She said you talked about this when I was a freshman.”

Somehow his dad was touching his shoulder, “And, at the time, your mother and I-”

“Bullshit!” Everything was starting to crackle around him, a painful white noise. He clenched his fists tightly, hardly able to speak or breath or think. “Mom’s been begging you for years to try something else. I  _ begged _ , Zoe’s begged-”

“-I don’t want to talk about this, now, Connor-”

“You sent me to rehab, you let her send me to fucking yoga retreat, but you won’t pay ten dollars a month to keep me from  _ killing _ myself-”

“Now you’re just being dramatic-

“Dramatic.” Connor repeated. “Why don’t you just call me a  _ fag _ like you want to, dad-”

Honestly, Connor didn’t really know where that came from. His dad was a casual homophobe at best. Connor didn’t think he’d actually ever heard his dad say that word. He flung gay around like an insult, but he’d never come out and call someone a fag. At least Connor didn’t think. Didn’t matter. 

“I don’t see how you thought this would be productive, and I don’t know why you would have dragged  _ Evan  _ along to see your temper tantrum,” Larry spat and Connor swore he almost snapped his own jaw he was clenching it so fucking hard.

“Don’t. Fucking. Talk. About. Him.”

“Connor-”

“I don’t need your permission to be on medication!” Connor screamed. Why why why why was he doing this, why couldn’t he just listen, why didn’t he care that Connor was in pain was struggling was hanging on by a thread and pulling at it but he wasn’t even able to break it and let go.

It wasn’t fair wasn’t fair wasn’t fair.

His blood was on fire, he was about to break his fingers by clenching them too tightly, he was going to lunge across that desk and grab his dad by the neck.

“If you want to live under my roof, be on my insurance-”

Something about that broke the trance. “Fuck you,” Connor said, seething, breathing heavily. “Come on Evan.”

Everyone in the office stared as they made their way out of his dad’s office, across the maze of cubicles. Connor didn’t look at them, wouldn’t acknowledge, wouldn’t engage. Elevator. He needed to get to the elevator. 

Evan pressed the button for the lobby on the elevator, and before the doors even closed, there was a slam, a crash of skin hitting drywall, and Evan jumped away from Connor as he realized he had punched a hole in the fucking elevator wall. His hand was throbbing and bleeding a little from the knuckles and he needed to get the fuck out of here he needed to leave leave leave leave leave.

* * *

 

They rushed past Darla, out of the office, fast, across the skywalk, and into the parking garage. Evan starting speaking to him, but it was like a dull whine, like a mosquito trapped behind glass. He wasn’t there, he wasn’t listening. “Connor-”

He was crackling with static electricity, he was fifteen seconds from impact, everything was starting to flicker out of reality like a strobe light as he walked up to his dad’s stupid black Lexus that he stood in the driveway loudly boasting about to a neighbor less than twenty four hours after Connor had gotten home from the hospital because he was trying to distract them all from the ambulance that had been there a week before. 

His throat was tight, his neck ached, it was worse than the drop from the ceiling beam. 

He carried the knife around with him a lot considering he attended a public school and people assumed he was going to blow it up. He only ever used it on himself. He flicked it open and everything crackled and sparked and then, finally, the satisfying thud of his fist hitting the tire followed by the whoosh of air. 

“Connor what the hell?” Evan sounded panicked and very far away.

He slashed another tire. Thud, whoosh. He liked the way it made his hand throb in pain.

“Connor.”

“What do you want, Hansen? I’m busy,” He heard himself say, gruff, far away. Not his voice. The kind of shit that came out of his mouth when he was breaking things, ruining things, fucking up everything. The air crackled, everything flickered out of reality. Ten points to sociopathy. He started around the other side of the car when suddenly he was on the ground.

Evan had tackled him to the ground, hard, and was trying to pin Connor’s arms to the side. It was weird. Evan was smaller than him and he smelled like vanilla fabric softener and way more solid than Connor had expected.

Not that he thought about Evan on top of him.

“Get off of me!” Connor shouted, snarling and crackling, and shoving shoving shoving and he felt his fist hit Evan’s shoulder and then felt Evan’s fist hit his face and they shoved and rolled around until Connor was able to shove Evan off and stand. He spat on the ground, feeling hot blood leaking out of his lip. 

Evan looked scared, wide eyed and freaked out and. 

This was it. 

This was it. 

Connor started walking toward the front of the car again, and Evan made a moved like he might tackle him again and he heard himself growl, “Evan, I swear to god if you come near me I will break your other arm.”

“So do it.” His face was hard. 

Connor stopped. Evan had hit him back, he’d tackled him. 

This was it this was it this was it. This was what always happened.

Evan was gone. He’d fucked that up too. 

“You want someone to hurt as badly as you, I’m here. I can’t run fast and we both know you’d kick my ass. So. Go for it. Break my arm, bash my head in. I don’t give a shit.”

“Stop.”

“Come on! You’re clearly itching to break something-”

“Evan shut up.” He couldn’t breathe. This was it this was it it was over Evan would leave, he’d never speak to him again, he’d leave, and this was it and he’d fucked it up he’d fucked up he’d fucked upfuckedupfuckedup.

This always happened.

Evan wasn’t talking.

They stood there for a long time, Evan quiet and Connor internally screaming and externally bleeding and they stood there waiting and waiting until Connor just. Started toward the car. 

They drove for a long time, in no particular direction.

After a while, Connor heard Evan say, “Sometimes the meds don’t even work. Look at me.”

Connor tried to breathe. It wasn’t “take me home” and it wasn’t “never talk to me again” and it wasn’t “what the fuck Connor.”

“Are you going to go on them?” Evan asked. “It’s just that, you said it, you’re eighteen…”

Connor sort of laughed hollowly. “I think it’s probably too late for that.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

“For me it does.” He had to be. It had to be too late because he was too tired, too angry, too fucked up to keep going for much longer.

 

* * *

He’d smoked obsessively until the wave of white crackling anger dissipated. Until he was left with a quiet nothing again. Riding shotgun, Evan looked horrified, traumatized. Connor knew he’d scared him. He knew he’d fucked up. 

He just kept thinking about how Evan was on meds. 

How there were times when Evan seemed okay. 

What if Evan wanted to flake? The thought didn’t make him angry; it didn’t make Connor feel much of anything. Just a twisting in his guts, a lump in his throat. 

“If you weren’t going to die in three weeks, what would you want to do with your life?”

“Uh,” Evan said, looking down at his lap. “I don’t know. I’m going to die in three weeks so…”

“But if you weren’t,” Connor pressed.

“I’d probably want to go to college. Study environmental science or something.”

“Why?” He wanted to know. 

“I. I uh, I really like… nature.” He said, looking down at his lap.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah… I was an apprentice park ranger this summer. At Ellison Park.”

“Cool.”

“You don’t have to lie just to be nice to me.”

“I’m not being nice to you,” Connor muttered. And it was true. He wasn’t. He wasn’t nice by nature anyway. He was testing a theory. “That’s kind of cool. Objectively.”

“Sure.”

“So… why nature?”

“I don’t know. I like trees.”

“ _Trees_?” That was a lot more specific than Connor expected. 

“Yeah. Trees.”

“Cool.”

* * *

 

Eventually, Connor had to turn around. He had to. He’d run out of gas and frankly he wouldn’t be surprised if he learned his dad had already cancelled his debit card. It wasn’t the first time he’d been cut off. 

He didn’t want to think about that. His right hand throbbed. Evan was biting his fingernails in the passenger seat. Fuck. He wanted to rip Evan’s hand away from his mouth because the sound of him biting his nails was getting under his skin. He also kind of wanted to reach across the center console and hold Evan’s hand, but he doubted Evan wanted any part of that now that he’d totally freaked out in front of him. 

Connor was such a fucking disaster. He’d been basically murderous earlier and now he was wondering if Evan would be annoyed if he wanted to hold hands. 

His brain was a joke.

“What about you?” Evan asked. 

“What?” 

“If you weren’t dying in three weeks, what would you want to do?”

Connor sighed, then laughed a little sarcastically, “Go on fucking meds.”

“Anything else?”

“I dunno. I haven’t… I’d probably just fuck up anything I tried.” That was true. He was fucking this up as they spoke. Connor wasn’t good at shit. He wasn’t good. He just wasn’t. 

“But if you didn’t?”

Connor sighed again, frustrated. He didn’t want Evan asking this shit. He didn’t want to think about it. “I don’t… I don’t know. I might go to college. I guess.” Like there was any fucking chance of a school accepting him. His grades were shitty.

“What for?”

“English,” He answered, sheepishly. “I guess. I… I like to read.” 

“Would you want to write?”

Connor shrugged. “Assuming this is a universe where I don’t fucking suck at stuff? Sure.”

“Cool.” Evan sounded genuine, sounded like he seriously thought it was cool. Connor rolled his eyes. He’d been in the same classes with Evan for over a decade, being weird and getting in trouble for reading in the back of class. If he thought it was cool, now probably wasn’t the time to bring it up. 

“Whatever Hansen.”

“Don’t Hansen me,  _ Murphy _ .”

That made him laugh. And Evan started laughing too. He sort of liked it when Evan showed a little bit of spine. 

…He actually really liked it. 

Evan had  _ punched him  _ and Connor thought it was hot. 

Clearly there was something super wrong with him.

“Do you think there’s an alternate universe where we’re happy?” Evan’s voice sounded sort of pleading, kind of desperate. It made Connor want to grab him. Made him want to kiss him. Made him wish they’d never ever met, because Evan… didn’t deserve this.

“I don’t want to think about that,” Connor snapped.

“Why not?”

“Because I… I just don’t.”

“Why not?”

Connor groaned, rolling his eyes again. He didn’t know what to say. He just wanted not to think about it. “I guess. I. I don’t want to think that there’s anything else. That after I’m dead, I’m dead. No more.”

They were both quiet for a while. As they passed mile marker after mile marked, Connor had to start thinking. He couldn’t go home. He knew that. He couldn’t. He found his voice eventually, then said, “Do you think I can stay at your house tonight? I… don’t want to go home.”

“I’ll text my mom.” He texted, his fingers tapping his phone, and they they fell silent again. 

Fuck. 

Evan inhaled sharply, saying. “Connor?”   


“Yeah.” He was getting off the interstate. 

“The thing you said to your dad…. After he called you dramatic?” Connor could hear him breathing, and he glanced over at Evan, trying to figure out what he wanted. “You said-”

Ah. Right. Well. “I’m gay. Probably.” It was true. “If you hadn’t figured that out already.”

“Okay.”

And then, because he was stupid and curious and had kissed this boy. “What about you?”

“I have no idea. I’ve never…”

“Alright.” He didn’t want to push. 

“Okay,” He said, breathless.

“Cool.”

“Great.”

* * *

 

He just stood there in the doorway while Evan went to talk to his mom. His hand hurt, but it was a detached kind of pain. Connor just wanted to vanish. Now that he was here in this normal house with normal people it was horribly obvious just how fucked up everything that had happened was. 

God, this was humiliating. He’d freaked out, he’d freaked out in front of Evan and now he was here, pathetic, begging to stay over because he genuinely had nowhere else to go. The only other person he could think to call was Dave-From-Rehab, but he’d been avoiding him and ducking his calls because Dave was like a lie detector and Connor didn’t need anyone getting in the way of him dying. 

But standing in the Hansens’ doorway, he wished he  _ had  _ called Dave. At least Dave was a mess too. This was too much. He was showing off just how truly pathetic and alone he was to Evan and his mom. This was embarrassing, this was humiliating, this was what he always fucking did because he was so fucking stupid and he couldn’t do one single fucking thing right. He shouldn’t have said anything, he should have just let it go but he couldn’t he was stupid and it was a mess and now Evan knew how bad it really was, how stupid and pathetic he was. 

“Hey,” Evan said when he came back. He was frowning. 

“Did he call then?” Connor asked. 

The look on Evan’s face made something in Connor’s guts squirm. “Your mom did.” He said it nicely, gently, like he knew it wasn’t the right answer. 

“Did he kick me out again?” 

“Do you want to go to my room?” Evan asked, his forehead creased like it was when he worried which was all the time. 

Connor shrugged. If Evan wanted him there, he’d go. He didn’t have anywhere else to be. Evan gave him this sad smile, like the sort you give a kid when nobody shows up to their ninth birthday party so the grownups would have to play laser tag with them (Connor knew what that looked like, too, but he didn’t want to talk about it). 

He turned away from Evan, to give himself two seconds to get it together and to take his shoes off. Evan’s house was nice, a little small, but nice. He didn’t want to wreck that too by dragging his muddy boots all over it. He placed his boots carefully next to the other shoes, because if he could line them up maybe he wouldn’t stand out as such a bother. He needed to make it seem like he wasn’t even here. 

He followed Evan to his room and sat on Evan’s bed and took a couple of shallow breaths to keep himself at a baseline of not ruining this anymore that it already was. 

Evan closed his door. “What do you mean ‘again’?” 

“Oh,” Connor looked up. Right. Evan was here and he’d freaked out in front of him, and Evan would want answers. And that made sense. “Yeah, they shipped me off to stay with my grandma for a while when I was sixteen.”

“Why?”

Connor shrugged; he didn’t want to get into it. Evan had kissed Zoe last weekend, he’d had a thing for her, Connor was sure. He didn’t want to explain. If he told Evan, Evan would hate him. 

“There was… I dunno. I got into a fight with Zoe.”

Evan nodded for him to continue. 

“It was stupid, but I think it was the last straw for my dad.”

“What was the fight about?”

Connor smiled bitterly. He didn’t remember. That was the worst thing. It was something stupid and then suddenly it was “BITCH” and “CUNT” and the chair was splintered in thousands of pieces, narrowly missing her head. “Honestly? I don’t remember. I do remember her making fun of me, something stupid about how my dad caught me wearing nail polish again, and then I…” He looked at his lap, watching as he hammered the last nails in the coffin of whatever it was they’d been doing. There was no way Evan would still talk to him after today. There was no way. “I wish I could say I  _ snapped _ , that like I didn’t mean to do it... I threw a chair at her, like from the kitchen? It missed. Which is good, I guess...After I nearly broke her door down, saying I was going to kill her, my parents sent me to my grandma’s for the rest of the summer.”

Evan looked… hurt.

“Stop…” Connor said, trying to keep the anger out of his voice. Fuck, no… this wasn’t a sympathy plea. It wasn’t. Evan couldn’t feel bad about this, he couldn’t. It made no sense.“Don’t feel bad for me.”

“Why not?”

“Because I…” He stopped. Took a breath. “It’s not like anything ever happened to me to make me this way. Nothing bad ever happened. I’m just… I’m just fucking like  _ this.  _ I try not to be but…” That was maybe the truest fucking thing Connor had ever said to another person. His breathing hitched, just for a second, and he pushed on, “Look, Evan, I’m not a victim. Nobody made me this way. Don’t fucking feel bad for me. I don’t deserve it.”

“How long was that? That you were kicked out for?”

“Two months,” Connor said. He pulled a hand through his hair. It was a long two months. And then there was the whole… developing a drug problem fiasco. Fuck he didn’t want to tell Evan anything else. But he kept looking at him like he wasn’t explaining the plot of a horror movie so. Connor kept talking, “Probably not the best idea though, in retrospect. I guess they didn’t think to tell her to put a lock on the medicine cabinet.”

Evan blinked, like he was surprised. “Sorry?”

“She had all of these pain meds. Leftover from surgery.” It was like talking about someone else. At least when he was high he wasn’t like… this. Whatever this was. “On an unrelated note, probably don’t give me any oxy unless the intention is to kill me. I’m a real asshole when I’m high.” He was trying to make a stupid joke. He didn’t know why. 

Evan swallowed loudly. And then, “Shit. Your hand.”   


“Oh. Right.” Connor flexed his hand a few times. It hurt, but it wasn’t broken. Whatever. 

“Uh… l-let me go get you some ice.”

“It’s fine.” He didn’t want Evan to leave. It was stupid. He knew. He knew how stupid it was. But if Evan walked out of the room, he might not come back, and Connor… he really needed him to come back.

“It’s… obviously it’s not.”

Connor shrugged.  _ Please don’t leave please. _

Evan left. Connor swallowed hard, trying to find something to distract himself with because. Fuck. Fuck. His brain was such a disaster, he was such an idiot. 

He spotted a picture of Evan, maybe like middle school age, with a man. Probably his dad. They were at a baseball game. Connor sort of smiled at the photo. Evan was young, and smiling, and he looked happy. The man looked like him, a little. He had the same ears. Same nose. 

Connor remembered that people used to say he and Larry looked alike. 

“Who’s the guy in this picture?”

“My dad.” He handed Connor the bag of peas. He figured that it was Evan’s dad, but

he’d… Evan hadn’t mentioned him. Maybe he was dead or something. He didn’t know what that might be like. Connor would never keep a photo of his dad in his bedroom. 

“Thanks,” Connor said. He took the frozen peas and rested it on his busted hand. “He’s  not around?”

“Not since I was seven.”

“I’m sorry.” His dad sucked and he probably didn’t care, but he had always been there.  Like. Physically at least. Larry did shit like showing up sometimes to little league games when Connor was younger. He was at least around. 

“It’s fine.”

“Baseball?” He pointed to the picture. 

“I’m not really into it, but I flew out to Colorado to visit and… that’s what he thought we  should do.” Evan frowned, like he was disappointed or annoyed or something. Connor, stupidly, thought about kissing him. He didn’t because he wasn’t stupid enough to think that would ever happen again. 

Evan kept talking about baseball,“I tried to like get back into it afterward for a while. But it’s sort of lame to try to play if you’re too scared to actually talk to the other kids on the field.”

Connor frowned. He got that. 

He liked to think that he would have played if Evan had asked.

“My dad’s really into baseball too. He has like all of this baseball cards in the garage.” Boxes and boxes of them. He used to take them out and show them to Connor when he was little, like seven and eight. Sometimes they’d play catch. Sometimes his dad would let him talk and talk about the books he was reading. Sometimes. Usually though he’d get annoyed that Connor didn’t seem interested in the baseball cards and send him inside, up to his bedroom. Or worse, he’d ask Zoe to look at the cards and send Connor inside, effectively telling him that Zoe was the better kid. 

“Yeah?” Evans said. 

Connor nodded, trying to smile at Evan and know it failed. “Yeah. He tried to get me into it for ages. He even got me a brand new glove like, I dunno, three years ago for my birthday?”

“Oh?”

“Spoiler: I am not into baseball.” He was a shit kid. He didn’t like anything he was supposed to like. He never did anything he was expected to. 

“What did you ask for?” Evan asked. 

“What?”

“What did you want for your birthday that year?”

Connor blinked, because. Who cared? “Oh. I don’t know. Probably a book or something.” He didn’t know. He didn’t even remember. He just remembered the way he had disappointed his dad, leaving the glove in the bag, tags still on it, ignoring it because he couldn’t handle the humiliation of being forced to play catch with his dad and then his dad would realize just how pathetic and weird he was now. 

“How’s your hand?” Evan asked. 

“Probably not broken.”

“Do you think-?”

“I don’t to talk about my dad anymore Evan.”

He nodded. “Okay.”

Connor pulled his phone out of his hoodie pocket. There was tons of missed calls and texts, all from MOM and ZOE and he couldn’t stand to look at them. He shut off his phone. 

“Has anyone texted you?”

He nodded. “My mom… Zoe.”

“Do they….?”

“I don’t want to talk about them either.”

“Okay.” Evan squirmed a little, and Connor felt worse. He didn’t know why he couldn’t stop being a dick. He didn’t want to be a dick. He didn’t; it just happened naturally. The sociopath counter was off the charts today. Evan yawned, looking at the clock. It was after ten. “Are you tired?”

Connor shrugged. 

“Let me find some pajamas for you, at least.”

“I can just sleep in my clothes,” he said quickly. The idea of putting on Evan’s clothes felt… a little overwhelming. A kindness he didn’t deserve. 

Evan rolled his eyes. It was… surprisingly adorable. “Don’t make it weird.”

Connor watched Evan dig through his drawers, eventually tossing a pair of navy and maroon flannel pants at him. “Do you want a shirt?” Evan asked. 

“No, I can just wear this one.”

Evan was grabbing some clothes for himself. 

The something about wearing pajamas in front of each other felt far more vulnerable than it had when Evan had stayed over at his place. Connor felt extremely self conscious. He couldn’t make himself stand up to change. He felt his legs shaking even as they were folded up under him. 

“I’m just… bathroom?” Evan said. 

“Yeah.”

Connor shakily stood up after Evan left. He felt himself going into middle school gym class mode; he was unbuckling his belt and yanking off his stupid skinny jeans as fast as his busted hand would allow, before pulling on the pajamas he’d been loaned, both legs at once. He tied up the drawstring and snorted a little; the pants ended just above his ankles, which were bony and stupid looking and he wished he had worn literally any other socks today, because the ones he had on were old and something his mom had gotten him from Hot Topic years ago when she was trying to be nice about the fact that all of his clothes scaled from gray to black. They had Jack Skellington on them. He didn’t even like  _ The Nightmare Before Christmas.  _ When he was little it scared the hell out of him. 

He sat down on Evan’s bed, folding his legs up like a pretzel so he could hide his stupid socks because the only thing worse would be to be barefoot and… There was something about having feet and toes and toenails that was making him feel really stupid. 

When Evan walked back in, he had on a familiar t-shirt. Eighth Grade Field Day. There was a big stupid soccer ball screened onto the shirt, and when Evan turned to put his dirty clothes into a hamper, Connor spotted something that. Surprised him. Because he’d forgotten. 

On Evan’s shoulder, in big sharpie letters, his name. 

“Nice shirt.”

Evan smiled awkwardly. “Thanks.”

“Weren’t you in my class in eighth grade?”   


Evan frowned, turning to close the door to his bedroom. “I’m so-sorry, I don’t remember.”

“Must have been,” Connor he said, trying not to make a big deal out of it. Evan was in his eighth grade class. Their math teacher was mean to him. That was back when Connor was still in gifted classes. He used to sit by Georgia Stern. Connor had smoked pot with her once before they graduated, and when he checked her facebook after rehab, Connor saw that she was dead. She'd killed herself sometime over the summer. 

“Sorry?” 

Evan sat down next to him on his way too small twin bed. Connor tried to stop thinking about Georgia Stern being a corpse. “I signed your shirt,” he said. 

“What?” Evan said. 

Connor reached out, poking the back of Evan’s shoulder as gently as he could manage. He didn’t want to hurt him, and he looked like he bruised easily. Evan pulled the collar until he spotted the big, stupid, capital letters; C-O-N-N-O-R. 

“Oh.”

“You hung around with Georgia Stern, right?” He didn’t know what he brought that up for. Morbid probably. Maybe they could all hang out in the afterlife of some bullshit.

“Yeah, sometimes. I don’t know. We were neighbors for a while.” Evan stopped, his face sad, and then bit his lip.  “I’m sorry, I don’t really… I don’t really remember you in the eighth grade.”

Of course not. Connor had spent eighth grade trying to disappear. “I didn’t really talk to anyone.”

“Yeah, but…” Evan bit his lip again. “You clearly talked to me. At least once.”

“Doesn’t matter.” It really didn’t. He didn’t want to talk about eighth grade. He should have just kept his mouth shut. 

“But…”

“Do you want to watch something?” He interrupted. 

“Sure.”

* * *

They were three episodes into  _ Parks and Rec _ and Connor had finally determined that Evan wasn’t trying to stay away from him because he was freaked out by how awful Connor was. Because he kept looking at Connor and smiling, because sometimes he’d reach out and tap Connor on the knee. 

But he was staying away. And Connor suspected that, based on the knee tapping and smiling, it was probably because they had made out last weekend and hadn’t talked about it really. 

Evan was going to fall off of the bed, Connor thought, frowning. They were keeping their distance from one another, and Evan was perched on the very edge of the bed and they were tired. It was getting close to midnight. 

At some point, Connor had put his hair up because it was bothering him, making the back of his neck too warm. It was times like these that he thought having long hair was stupid. But then most things about him were. He was leaning against the headboard. Evan kept looking at him, and then looking away quickly, like he’d been caught. 

They ought to just. Like. Sit closer together, right? That’s what real people would do, right?

Connor didn’t know how the fuck to do this. But he thought maybe that would be a thing people who made out and stared at each other did. 

Evan nearly lost his balance again, and Connor groaned and said, “Jesus will you just come here?” Evan made this high pitched squeak and Connor felt super super stupid, shit shit shit shit, because obviously Evan didn’t want this he was stupid, he’s misread this, he was an asshole, idiot, moron. 

But then suddenly he stopped moving and was resting his head back on Connor’s shoulder and Connor felt him let out a sigh. 

“Is that okay?” He asked, hating himself.

“Yeah…” Evan breathed. 

Oh. 

It was weird having Evan this close. His shoulders were broad and warm and with the way he was sitting, Connor could smell Evan’s shampoo. He could feel it everytime Evan took a breath. If he wanted he could turn slightly and kiss Evan’s neck. 

Which he absolutely wanted. 

But he didn’t do it because he was aware that he was a freak and Evan wouldn’t want that. There was no way. 

But being together? Like this? It was… nice. It was nice. It was weird and nice and warm and soft and Evan leaned back against him, a warm weight. 

After another episode, after midnight, Connor thought he felt Evan shiver. His arm brushed against Evan’s, and he felt that Evan was covered in goosebumps. 

“Cold?”

“Uh, yeah, I’m just going to get a hoodie-”

“Just take mine,” Connor heard himself say. 

“W-what?” Evan sounded confused, and he turned a little to look at Connor. And they were so close together that it would take less than a breath to close the gap between them to kiss. But Connor wouldn’t do that. He knew better. He knew he wasn’t going to get more than this weird cuddling. And he was okay with that, he was going to die in three weeks. He didn’t care. 

“Don’t get up. Just take mine.” Connor quickly pulled down the zipper of his hoodie, and pulled his arms through the sleeves. He caught Evan watching, but he didn’t really. Care. Honestly. Evan had already seen how damaged and gross his arms were. Or maybe he was looking at Connor’s old Nirvana t-shirt. Or maybe Evan was looking at his chest. He didn’t know. “Here.”

“Thanks.” Evan pulled the hoodie on and gave Connor a shy smile. 

They settled back again, closed together but not really cuddling, and Connor didn’t really watch the rest of the  _ Parks and Rec _ episode. Instead he focused on Evan, on the soft sound of his breathing, on the way he seemed to be finally relaxing. 

Of course, Connor realized, Evan was falling asleep. “You’re falling asleep,” he said softly. 

“Sorry.”

“No, I should let you go to sleep,” Connor said, reluctantly untangling himself, thinking he’d go sleep on the sofa downstairs.

“No stay,” Evan said, sleepily. 

“Hansen, you sleep in a  _ twin  _ bed. We won’t fit.” He smiled slightly. 

“Stay.”

“Your mom…” Connor’s eyes traveled to the door, frowning. They’d get caught. 

“Stay. I’ll set an alarm.”

He had approximately no chance once Evan said that. He smiled, nervous and weird, and said, “Okay.”

It took them a bit to get settled, and Connor was extremely surprised to find that Evan wanted to be the big spoon. But it was. Nicer than he expected. It made his heart squeeze painfully, especially when Evan sighed against the skin of the back of his neck. Connor was on fire. He didn’t know what to do. 

He didn’t deserve this, he didn’t, he’d fuck up the whole day today. At every opportunity, Connor had screwed something up. He was the worst. He didn’t deserve to have this. 

“I…” Connor said, his voice raspy and brittle. “I’m sorry about today. I won’t fuck up tomorrow, I swear.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Evan mumbled, breath on Connor’s neck, warm and nice. “Didn’t fuck up anything.”

“You sure?” Evan was fucking wrong, of course, but he wanted to hear that he thought Connor was okay. 

“Well you fucked up that car pretty bad… but yeah.” He laughed breathily. 

Connor rolled over, and they were so close to each other that their chests were touching. And he. He knew it was stupid and a bad idea, but. He just. He kissed Evan, soft and warm, and Evan sighed and kissed him back, harder, and Connor thought his heart might actually explode. Evan’s hands were everywhere,  _ everywhere,  _ chest, back, shoulders, neck, and Connor didn’t know what to do so he… touched him back. Hips, face, hair, shoulders. Eventually they slowed down, kissing slowly and softer and sleepily. And then Evan was resting his head on Connor’s shoulder and they were both drifting off to sleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the overwhelmingly positive response, everyone! Next update will be tomorrow. :)


	3. The Life That I've Got (But Never Used)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connor sends some texts. Connor deletes some texts. 
> 
>  
> 
> \---  
> Companion to Chapters 13 and 14 of The Desperate Type

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title comes from "Out Through the Curtain" by The Hush Sound.

Connor had fallen asleep. He could tell because his mouth was dry and his eyes felt glued together (he really needed to stop sleeping in his contacts, fuck) and because if he were awake he would have never let himself bury his face in Evan’s neck like it was. Connor pulled away carefully, fumbling around for his phone. He squinted at the screen, seeing that it was 3:15. He didn’t really know why he was awake. Usually if he managed to get to sleep he stayed that way…

“Bees.”

Connor glanced over at Evan, trying to figure out what the fuck he was saying bees for in the middle of the night, but then. 

He was fast asleep, Connor realized, his face slack and eyes shut, saying something about “bee populations, because of the almonds.” 

Connor broke out in a seriously stupid grin. 

That was. 

Insanely cute. 

He tapped out a text to Evan, saying, “You talk in your sleep. Not like embarrassing or anything weird, so don’t get freaked out. But you mumbled something about bee populations and it was cute.”

And then, smiling at Evan who was smiling in his sleep, “I realize it is super weird that I just texted you that since we’re in the same room and you’re unconscious.”

Connor laid back down, not snuggling up to Evan quite as closely, but their feet and knees were still touching. 

He sighed. Closed his eyes. 

The sheets in Evan’s room smelled nice. Like vanilla and whatever shampoo Evan used and… Connor liked it. He sent another text, “What fabric softener do you use? Your whole bed smells like like a cupcake but I kind of like it?”

He closed his eyes again. In his sleep Evan said something else, hard to understand, but it might have been about pizza. Evan’s breathing was slow and deep and he didn’t snore and Connor wanted to just… slip back to sleep. 

But his brain was going haywire, remembering the way that Evan had kissed him and the fact that Evan didn’t seem scared of him and how his hand was achey and stiff and his knuckles were bruised. 

He stared down at his phone, a lump in his throat. 

And just when he finally started to drift off. 

“No smoking!” A hand smacked Connor’s, sending his phone falling to the floor. 

“What?”

But Evan yawned, his eyes still closed, and shifted before his breathing returned to the deep, even breaths. 

Connor covered his mouth with his hand, trying to hard not to laugh out loud.  _ Oh. My. God.  _

Sleep was not coming for a while, Connor knew. He looked at Evan, asleep, looking young and untroubled and soft. Connor felt his heart squeeze painfully in his chest. 

He looked down at his phone, and typed out two texts. He sent them before he could decide not to do it. He sent them because… it was stupid. Connor knew it was stupid. 

But he wanted Evan to know that he was… likable. That he was cute and likable and real and he smelled nice and was kind and. 

Connor wished a little that he hadn’t said something because, like. Evan probably wouldn’t want him to like him. He probably just wanted him to shut up and die. 

But. 

Still.

* * *

 

The day at school was… awkward. Connor swore that everyone could tell his parents had kicked him out. Like borrowing a t-shirt from Evan had advertised to everyone just all of the shit going on with his family. 

And then there was the thing that happened in Physics. 

Connor sort of wished he had just ignored Alana when she started talking. It might have been… easier. 

But. 

Fuck. 

He’d known Alana since middle school. He’d been her lab partner in Chemistry for a full year and he’d tanked their  _ Huckleberry Finn _ presentation that year too, because he was a mess and an asshole and. 

She asked about him wearing Evan’s shirt and he… snapped at her. And she started to like, tear up, and fucking hell. 

Connor wound up like… awkwardly grabbing a box of tissues for her. They wound up talking about her dead grandma and honestly, Connor. Felt bad. 

He felt bad for her. 

Because something about the fact that she was apparently like an exposed nerve, like a broken tooth or a third degree burn…

Fuck. 

He felt like that… all of the time. 

And then. 

Like the idiot he was. 

Connor heard himself tell Alana Beck that 1. He got the way she was feeling and 2. She ought to tell someone about it. “You should um. Have you told anyone?”  

Alana shook her head, looking even sadder. “No. Not really. I just… no.”

Connor nodded. “Then I guess I’m glad you told me…” He shrugged. Fuck he was super bad at this. “I can’t… I don’t know how to, like,  _ help  _ or whatever. Or if you even want that, because like, I  _ get it  _ if you don’t want um… I know  _ I’m _ like…” He shook his head, because he was probably making this worse, he was probably shoving her toward sites like CatchingTheTrain. He was so bad. “Anyways. Just. Thanks, I guess? For telling me.”

“Thanks. To you too.” 

“Um… yeah. I um. Yeah.”

And then they did their assignment and Connor shared a piece of gum with her and basically…

He was an idiot. 

But something about the look on Alana’s face had freaked him out. Because he knew that look. He saw it in the mirror every time he made the mistake of looking. 

 

* * *

Zoe found him after school. She was pissed obviously. 

He’d been expecting her to be upset after hearing that he wasn’t allowed back home from Evan’s mom. But he hadn’t expected her to like… talk to him? Because when he fucked up like this, Zoe backed way the fuck off. 

The summer following the chair thing? They didn’t talk again until the third week of school when Zoe told him not to wait for her after school. Back when he drove her to school all of the time. 

And this summer? Zoe didn’t visit at all when he was in rehab. She said that she would once, but she didn’t, and he didn’t blame her. He couldn’t blame her even if he wanted to; he’d been horrible to her since she was, like, bored. 

He didn’t blame her for being pissed. 

But he was confused why she was talking to him, her face getting red while she interrogated him. She usually iced him out. She usually pretended he didn’t exist. “What is going on with you?” Zoe asked, when she found him at his locker.

“Nothing,” Connor answered because if he said so much as one more word to her, he’d tell her everything. He was the worst with secrets with her. She figured out the Tooth Fairy when she was six and he stupidly nodded and said, “Like Santa” and Zoe had been upset. He always spoiled her birthday presents too, when they were little. He never knew when to stop talking to her, so he stopped talking to her at all.  

“Mom and dad had a massive fight last night,” She said, pressing on, like he didn’t know already. “After mom picked dad up.”

Connor just looked at her. 

“Dad… He started throwing around divorce again.”

It had been awhile since they’d heard that one. The last time Connor remembered was when he was thirteen. But he was sure he just hadn’t been paying attention.

“Good,” Connor muttered. “Maybe they should break up. They aren’t happy.”

Zoe stared at him for a long moment, her face turning red and. 

Then she hit him. 

She actually hit pretty hard, Connor thought. She could have had a career as a boxer. She always used to win when they play fought as kids, and Connor never knew if he was letting her win or if he just literally couldn’t really hit her back. “How can you say that?” She shouted, and he flinched, and she shoved him back against the locker, “Maybe you don’t give a shit,” She went on, shoving him again, but then Connor spotted Evan shoving his way through the small crowd of people watching this shitshow unfold. 

“ _ Hey _ , Zoe, stop!”

“Please get out of my way Evan,” Zoe said. Her voice was low and shaky and a lot like the voice his mom used to use on them when they were little and misbehaving. 

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Evan said quietly. Connor spotted a few phones out, 

recording this, snapping pictures. 

“No, let her finish what she started,” Connor said. She deserved a chance to really let  him have it. 

“What?” Evan turned to look at him, like he finally understood that Connor was genuinely  crazy.  “I’m not.  _ No _ . Both of you.  _ Stop _ .”

“Fuck…” Zoe burst into tears then. 

He didn’t want that. He never wanted that. No matter what he did, he just hurt her. It  wasn’t fair it wasn’t fair. “Zo, I’m  _ sorry. _ ”

“Just, can you just try to be normal for like one week, Connor? I just want to get through  one week where I don’t….”

“I’m sorry,” He repeated. There was nothing he could say.

She took off, saying she had band. The crowd dissipated. Connor stood there, frozen, for  a long moment. And then he said he needed to take Evan to therapy.

* * *

 

Evan asked him, “Are you okay?”

Connor rolled his eyes as they walked up to his car. He didn’t know why Evan would bother asking. The answer was so fucking obvious. “No.”

“Zoe… she  _ hit _ you.” 

“Yep.” 

“She’s…”

“Allowed to be mad. I’m messing up her life.” 

He dropped Evan off at his therapist’s office. “Text me when you’re done.”

Evan agreed. And Connor drove to the Starbucks a few blocks away. He hunched over his drink, the cup warming his cold fingers. Evan saw Dr. Sherman, Connor knew. That felt… strange. Like Evan was following the path Connor had been pushed off of at thirteen. 

Fuck. 

Connor picked up his phone, pulling up an unfinished text he had started to Zoe at the start of the school year. 

“Sorry about” followed by a blinking cursor. 

Even now, Connor had no words to express what he wanted to say to her. 

He was a failure at everything, and apologies… apologies were one of the things he regretted not getting better at. He’d never managed the whole “amends” part of a twelve step program. 

Connor went through his phone, starting to delete texts. He knew it was stupidly wishful thinking, but… his dad went through his shit, sometimes. Checked his emails, went through his phone, stuff like that. 

Connor never wanted there to be anything to find. 

He’d been pretty meticulous about deleting his texts and exchanges from Evan, especially the ones from CatchingTheTrain.

Connor deleted of all of the texts with Dave too. He just… Dave felt. Private. Connor hadn’t even mentioned him to Evan. 

So all of Dave’s texts asking him to go to meetings and grab coffee and wishing him a happy birthday were gone. 

His phone was basically devoid of information. 

Except that fucking unfinished text to Zoe. “Sorry about.” 

He was startled by a text from Evan, asking to be picked up. Had he really wasted more than an hour just… sitting here? 

He pulled himself out of the Starbucks, pulling the car back to Evan’s therapist’s office. 

When Evan climbed in the car, he looked pale. He looked sick. They’d been driving for a few minutes when Evan practically clawed off his arm, begging for Connor to pull over. Connor heard Evan barf just seconds after Evan scrambled out of the car. 

“Dude, are you okay?” Connor asked, climbing out after Evan.

Evan was shaking his head violently, looking so pale he was almost gray. “I got…” He wheezed, “I  _ fucked up _ in therapy. I got safety checked.”

“Oh fuck,” Connor felt a chill go down his spine. Fuck, fuck,  _ fuck _ . “What did you say?”

“That I didn’t have a plan, o-obviously. I.  _ Fuck _ . They’re going to throw us both in the psych ward.”

“The psych ward isn’t the worst place, but it does leave you pretty zonked out for a couple of days. I was sedated for most of it,” Connor mumbled. “Okay. Shit,” He tried, lighting a cigarette, desperate, silently freaking out. “Shit. Well… well. They let you leave right?”

Evan nodded. He wasn’t very convincing.

“And they didn’t say anything about telling your mom?”

He shook his head. 

“Okay. Okay,” Connor said, sucking in a deep breath. “Okay. We should be fine then?”

“You’re sure?”

“I read up on it on CatchingTheTrain before my last appointment. In case _ I _ fucked up. We’re probably fine as long as we don’t act like we’re going to kill ourselves.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”

* * *

 

He felt like an extreme intruder staying with Evan and his mom. He felt like a bull in a china shop, like an F5 tornado about to demolish everything. 

Evan’s mom… she was nice. She was letting him stay here and did nice things like tell him and Evan to eat before school and kiss their cheeks… Things that he knew he didn’t deserve, things that made his heart twist because he only knew her son because they both wanted to die and because he wasn’t totally sure he could remember the last time his mom had been that affectionate with him. 

Connor also knew that she worked two jobs and was back in school. That she couldn’t be around a lot because she pulled double shifts to make sure they didn’t get behind on bills. He’d only ever seen her wear scrubs until she changed on Friday night; Evan mentioned off hand that she worked as a nurse’s aid. 

Connor’s mom didn’t have to work because his dad made enough money without it. Their bills were all set to autopay and the only time anyone had ever incurred an overdraft fee was when Connor over drew his checking account at an ATM to buy drugs last spring. 

He knew that inconveniencing Evan’s mom like this was shitty. He knew it wasn’t fair to her. So he tried not to make it worse. He kept his shoes neatly in line with Evan’s by the door, he straightened up pillows and cleared off tables if he used them. When Evan’s mom got home with Chinese for dinner, he tried to give her money for the meal. 

“Honey, put that away,” Heidi said, smiling at him. “You’re our guest.” Evan looked embarrassed when she said that, and Connor felt even stupider. 

“Thank you,” he mumbled, intending to find some other way to pay her back. Maybe he’d hide the cash in their freezer or something. 

“Do you guys want to watch something?” Evan’s mom asked, taking a seat on the sofa. Evan and Connor were both on the floor crowded around the coffee table. Evan was poking at his food with his chopsticks, and Connor tried desperately not to eat as much or as fast as he typically would. He was starving, but this wasn’t his food to eat. He wasn’t supposed to be here, invading, screwing up this nice lady’s life. 

She turned on a local station where a terrible Friday night comedy was playing. “Tim Allen ought to retire,” she said, shaking her head. “Frankly this is just embarrassing.”

“Stick to voiceover work, maybe,” Evan added, quietly. 

“He makes a decent Buzz Lightyear,” Connor said. “And Santa Claus.”

“That’s about it though,” Heidi said, smiling while she shook her head. She took a bite of her food. “I mean, how is this show even still on?”

Connor was almost starting to relax, to feel like maybe Evan’s mom wasn’t hoping to find a way to subtly tell him to leave, when the doorbell rang. 

“That’s probably your mom,” Evan’s mom said, standing up and crossing to get the door. 

For maybe half a second, Connor smiled, hopeful, because he was an idiot who couldn’t rid himself of the biological comfort that knowing his mom cared brought. But then he remembered the slashed tires, the hundreds of texts, and the balloon of hope deflated. She didn’t want to see him. She was here because she felt obligated. 

Heidi pulled the door open, and he got to his feet, swallowing down the sort of kindergarten feeling of wanting to fling himself at her. If he did that now, he’d probably kill her. She was tiny, and breakable. Connor had learned that most people were. His issue was that he wished that he was; being tiny and breakable is an asset when you’re looking to fast track your way out of your life. 

She wasn’t smiling when she came inside. Her eyes looked tired. 

He’d done that. He’d seen that look before. Rehab. Summer after sophomore year. Most of middle school. He’d made that look permanent.

He wondered if there was a chance Evan would move up their jump date. 

“Come in,” Evan’s mom said. “Can I get you anything?”   


Connor’s mom frowned. He wondered if she was freaking out internally about the potential that the Chinese food they were eating had MSG. “I can’t stay… I.” He watched her wring her hands. “I wish I could, I just… Larry’s business partners are all in town for their annual meeting and I’ve had plans to host a dinner for months.”   


“Sure,” Evan’s mom said. Connor was surprised to hear an edge in her tone. Like she found that inappropriate. He bit his lip, embarrassed, but not sure why. That was just his family. 

He took the backpack his mom was holding without a word. He kept his head down, afraid to look at her. If he looked at her, it was all over. He’d lose it, he’d break down…

“Your glasses are in there as well. I know you’ve been sleeping in your contacts, but you’re really not supposed to-”   


“Thanks mom,” He said, cutting her off, embarrassed. God, she had to mortify him even at his lowest point. This was up there with trying to pack him a stuffed animal for rehab.    


Connor rolled his eyes when Evan mouthed, “Glasses?” at him.    


“Connor, can I speak with you for a moment? Outside?”   


He shot Evan a long suffering stare. “Sure.”   


“Excuse us,” His mom said in her voice reserved for other moms, polite but sort of cold. She marched him outside, and Connor braced himself for the worst.

“I don’t know what to do about this Connor,” She said in a terse, clipped voice. “It’ll be a miracle if I can convince your dad to let you come back home. He’s already talking about taking the damages out of your college fund.”

“So do it,” He said, voice hollow. “I’m not going to college.”

His mom looked upset, which was the last thing he wanted. “Connor…”

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, eyes focusing on the ground. “I screwed up…”

“Yes, you did.”

He flinched. His mom was his defender; she always took his side. To this day, she’d only ever wavered twice: once when he threw the chair at Zoe and when she sent him to rehab. 

“You have to be polite to these people, Connor,” She went on. “I’ll work on your dad, but in the meantime don’t make this worse. It’s extremely kind of Mrs. Hansen to let you stay.” Implicit in her little sermon was that if the situation were reversed, she would not do the same thing. 

Connor nodded, eyes still downcast. He got it. He probably ought to be the picture in the dictionary beside the definition of a delinquent or some shit. 

Part of him, he realized, had been holding out hope that maybe if he finally screwed up big enough that they’d  _ do  _ something. He thought maybe after rehab, but that had been a bust. Then at the start of the school year when he tried to kill himself, everyone just basically stopped talking to him. They were scared to set him off which meant that they just… left him alone to struggle through the wilderness of his own thoughts. He really had thought, had hoped, idiotically that if he lost his fucking mind asking for meds, if he made enough of a mess, maybe they’d look into it with him. And here he was, stupidly disappointed again. No wonder he wanted to die. He could probably fucking kill someone and all his parents would do is act disappointed that he wasn’t smart enough to think his way out of being homicidal. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what’s…”  _ Wrong with me.  _ “I’m just. I’m  _ sorry _ .”

She nodded, sighing. “I’m sorry, but I really have to get back to the house.” She was looking at her phone, looking upset. Probably because she had to drive out her to deal with his stuff, or because she thought Mrs. Hansen was judging her. 

“I know. I’m sorry again, I’ll… I’m sorry.” 

“Behave, please.”

“I will.”

“I’ll call you.”

“Okay.”

And then she was gone. No hug or cheek kiss or shoulder squeeze. She just tucked a piece of her hair behind her ear and turned down the driveway. He watched her leave, feeling hollow and small, watching until he couldn’t see her car anymore. 

He didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about what happened after you died. He hoped that it meant everything, everything stopped, forever. But if it didn’t… 

Would he miss his mom the way he did right now? Would it be like watching until her car disappeared? 

He’d spent so long pushing and shoving her away that he felt like he’d missed his chance to say goodbye. And that hurt. It burned in his chest.

* * *

 

He walked inside, and Evan’s mom told him to go ahead and put his things in Evan’s bedroom. Connor nodded, doing his best to act like a polite, normal houseguest who totally wasn’t there because he’d been kicked out of his parents house for the third time in two years. He set the bag down in the corner of Evan’s bedroom, and quietly walked back toward the door. 

He hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, but he paused when he heard their voices. Connor braced himself for the worst, to hear them talking about what a mess he was and how awful it was that they were stuck with him staying over. 

Instead he heard Evan’s mom ask if he thought watching a movie was a good idea. “I think you both deserve a night to veg out and relax.”

“Sure, yeah. I mean. I’ll ask him?”

Connor let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. Why on earth were these people so… nice? The guilty feeling about pairing up with Evan was back again, reminding him that when they did this, Mrs. Hansen was going to be crushed. 

He wasn’t sure he was okay with that. For awhile he could pretend he didn’t give a shit about anything. But that’s how he was. Care about everything or nothing. Feel it all or be numb. Black or white, good or bad, there was no room for middle ground. 

He walked back into the living room quickly so it didn’t seem like he was creepily eavesdropping and resumed sitting at the coffee table with Evan. 

“How’s your mom, Connor?” Heidi asked him. 

“Okay,” He said, shrugging. “She asked me to say thank you, for. You know. Letting me stay.”

“It’s my pleasure, sweetheart,” She said. “What do you say we turn on a movie or something? I can’t take anymore of this Tim Allen nonsense.”

They ended up watching  _ Little Miss Sunshine.  _ Evan had seen it before, Connor hadn’t. They sat together on the sofa, with Heidi on the end. Connor, Evan, Heidi, all in a row. Evan kept looking over at Connor, like he was worried about how he might react to certain plotlines. Mostly it was just funny. He laughed a lot more than he expected to. Heidi got up a few times, first to fetch them popcorn and sodas, and a second time to take a phone call. 

“Should we pause it?” Connor asked. 

Evan shook his head. “It’s probably work. She’ll be right back.”

She was back pretty quickly. “Sorry,” She said, sitting back down. “What did I miss?”

“The grandpa died,” Evan said. 

“Oh man, this movie makes our lives look pretty normal huh?” 

Evan gave his mom this sort of pained smile, and Connor frowned a little. His parents would never ever say something like that. They’d jump through every imaginable hoop to keep from addressing the fact that they had problems. 

And Heidi was just casual about it, mentioning that hey, stuff sucked but at least she didn’t drive a beat up old VW bus. 

When the movie ended, Heidi said she was exhausted and headed up to bed. “Don’t stay up all night,” she said, ruffling Evan’s hair affectionately. His face got a little pink, but he got up and gave her a hug and kissed her cheek goodnight. 

“Night boys,” She said, and as she rounded the sofa to head to her bedroom, she paused and dropped a kiss on the top of Connor’s head. “Wake me if you need anything. Love you guys!” 

“Sorry she’s… she’s just excited that I have someone over,” Evan mumbled, staring down at his socks. 

“It’s okay,” Connor said, trying to stop the smile forming from making it to his lips. “She’s… she’s really nice.”

Evan shrugged it off. 


	4. Sleeping For The Wrong Team

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connor and Evan aren't going to die virgins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GUYS, it's that chapter. So, if you're not comfortable with vague descriptions of teenagers having awkward sex for the first time, please feel free to skip down to the last section. Things stay pretty PG-13, but just be aware of the content.

This was the most socializing Connor had done since middle school, and honestly, it had left him pretty exhausted. He was super grateful when Jared’s parents kicked them out. Well… they didn’t seem to care if Evan left. Mrs. Kleinman even invited him along to whatever Temple-related activity that they were doing. But Connor suspected she remembered him from the time he punched Jared and broke his glasses less than 24 hours before his bar mitzvah and was keen to get him out of their house. If he was a different, or better person he might have tried harder to appear likable and nice in front of the Kleinmans, but he was fucking tired and Evan had given him a weirdly obvious hickey and.

He just wasn’t able to conjure up any fucks to give about being polite to Jared’s parents.

Evan looked pretty good as they were leaving. His eyes seemed brighter, and he seemed a lot less tightly wound as they were leaving.

“Was that… did you have an okay time?” Evan asked him as they climbed into Connor’s car.  

He tried to smile, trying to be reassuring, nodding. “I can’t believe we played video games all day,” Connor said, trying to that kind of nice, comfortable laugh that normal people did sometimes. He sighed, “This is why we’re going to die virgins.”

“Uh,” Evan said.

And Connor realized with a sudden rush what he had said and regretted his entire existence and debated backing the car out and into a tree so he could cause a fiery wreck before either of them could actually remember him ever speaking words. His face felt too hot, his whole body felt too hot, just fuck fuck fuck fuck, “It was a joke,” he said. He plead. He hated himself. “Sorry. Bad joke. Just… I was kidding.”

But Evan was laughing. Not like. At him. Like he thought it was funny. So Connor laughed too because it was less awkward than sitting there in silence.

Evan looked at him weirdly for a second, and then said, “Well. What if we didn’t?”

He hadn’t heard that right, right? He hadn’t heard that right. His brain was misfiring, he was stupid, obviously Evan didn’t want to have sex with him, he was just. Stupid that was idiotic.

“Connor?”

He blinked rapidly, trying to shift his brain back into braining. “You. Don’t. I. Um.”

“I don’t… er. Have anything at my house though, so we’d need to go to the drug store or something,” Evan said, all very practical and straightforward like this was a thing people talked about with or in front of him ever.

“Connor?”

“I uh. Yeah. If you’re _sure_.”

Evan kind of nodded and Connor… backed out of the driveway, still sort of hoping for a car accident. They didn’t really talk or anything on the way out of Jared’s neighborhood. Connor just decided to go to the CVS off of the main street because well… it wasn’t like Evan was telling him where to go. He didn’t know. He didn’t go, like, sex supply shopping. Fuck.

He parked the car and waited for Evan to climb out before getting out himself. He kept waiting to panic or freak out or whatever so. He was hoping that didn’t happen.

Evan led the way into the store, and the pair of them sort of meandered toward the “family planning” area which was. Fucking. Hilarious. Like. First off, pregnancy was impossible, and also like both of them were going to die in a few weeks. Like. How god damn ironic was it to be in the family planning section of this fucking store?

“So…” Evan said.

“Uh. Yeah,” Connor said. Eloquent. He was such a fucking idiot standing here.

“What do we, erm. Need?” Evan asked.

Like Connor had any fucking clue. His only experience was with a high tweaker, and most of the porn he watched when he was bored skipped all of the practical stuff like condoms. Like doorbell, pizza guy, sausage joke, smash cut to full on anal penetration, no pause. He had looked into it, of course, mostly out of curiosity (and also because he had that fanfiction phase for a minute freshman year and none of that shit seemed to be physically possible).  “Hang on,” pulled his phone out, typing fast.

“Who the hell are you texting?” Evan squeaked, grabbing at Connor’s wrist.

“I didn’t - _I’m not_ -” Connor tried to breathe, appear calm, like this was a thing people did. “I’m _googling_ it.”

And Evan erupted in giggled. “Oh my god,” he said, shaking his head. “Thank god.”

Connor sort of smiled awkwardly, probably that serial killer-y thing he caught himself doing sometimes.

Both of them leaning over Connor’s cracked iPhone, they decided between the condom and lube options.

“Um,” Evan said. “One of us has to… Buy all this.” His face was so pink it was kind of splotchy.

“Right,” Connor said. “You’re sorta… red.”

“Oh.”

“How bad is my face?” Connor asked, not meeting Evan’s eyes.

“Not bad. Kinda red in the cheeks?”

Connor nodded. “Give me a few minutes,” He said, taking the condom box and lube bottle out of Evan’s hand, like. Yeah. Fuck this. He could just buy stuff for sex at the local CVS like, yeah, this was totally normal. At the checkout counter he threw a pack of gum up there as well, waiting and dimly horrified as he realized the cashier absolutely went to their school. Evan was loitering by the door and Connor realized. Oh. Right.

Of course.

Once the plastic bag with everything was handed to him, he sort of rushed past Evan and out the pharmacy doors.

Of course he was fucking with him. And he let it go this far because. Of course. Connor was an idiot. Evan was fucking with him and he was too stupid and desperate to realize until after he made a fool of himself in public.

Evan walked after him, face fairly neutral, and climbed into the unlocked car while Connor’s twitchy fingers were still searching his coat pocket for his cigarettes.

“Everything… what’s up?” Evan asked when Connor slammed the door and started the car.

Connor shrugged, shoving the bag at Evan. “Good joke.”

“Wha-?”

“I get that I’m easy to mess with, but seeing as I’m your ride to the water tower, I’d appreciate it if you could just lay off-”

Evan leaned over and kissed him, then pulled back, looking like… Connor didn’t know what. “Sorry, I. I should have asked first that was… that was shitty. I. You’re supposed to ask first, so I hope that was okay…” He took a big gulp of air, fingers playing with the seam of his jeans. “I’m not messing with you. I swear.” And just as Connor opened his mouth to retort, Evan pushed on, “Thank you, for um. Buying everything. I probably would have started hyperventilating.”

Connor stared at him, not sure what to believe. “You’re… you’re not messing with me?”

“No!” Evan said, looking like. Freaked. “Please, god, no. I wouldn’t- I. I’m not. I’m just… _I’m just bad at this_ and I’m sorry, god, please don’t be mad.”

Connor bit down on his lip hard. Took a couple of breaths. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

“It’s. Don’t worry about it, it’s… It’s fine.”

Connor nodded. “Should… should we go back to your place then?” Both of them were totally staring at the plastic bag with condoms and lube that was sitting in Evan’s lap. Connor heard Evan audibly swallow.

“Yeah. We should.”

* * *

 

“And you’re, um, sure? That your mom won’t be home for a while?” Connor felt like his heart was going to pound right out of his chest the second they walked into the Hansen house. Or like he might puke. But not in like a nauseated way, just because was pretty sure his body didn’t know just what the fuck else to do. It wasn’t like this was actually going to happen. There was absolutely no way that he was actually.

The moment Connor had pulled his boots off and Evan locked the door, that line of thinking was interrupted by Evan pushing him against the front door and kissing him hard.

“Sorry, sorry,” Evan said, pulling away, both of them kind of out of breath. “It’s just that. I dunno. You had a weird look on your face… Sorry.”

“Please stop apologizing for kissing me,” Connor rasped. “I-”

“No!” Evan said, smiling idiotically, almost laughing. “I’m not. It’s just. I’m sorry. For being sorry. I just… was that okay?”

“Yeah,” Connor nodded. “Yeah.” He pressed his fingers awkwardly the door he was still backed up against. “You’re sure your mom…?”

“Yes,” Evan said firmly. “But we can go up to my room if you’re worried.”

Connor nodded. His heart thudded harder and louder in his chest. Evan pulled him by the wrist (which was a little bit painful, he’d been picking at a scab there in the very early morning when he woke up alone in Evan’s bed). He pulled him all the way into his bedroom, and then when they were inside, he locked the door.

Connor quirked an awkward smile. Evan had a lock on his bedroom door; Connor didn’t have a bedroom door at all.

“Are you sure about this?” Connor asked Evan. They were standing across the room from each other, fully clothed, a plastic CVS bag with condoms and lube sitting on Evan’s bed. Despite the fact that it looked innocuous, it was the only thing Connor could see.

“I’m sure,” Evan said. “If you are…?” He bit his lip. “I don’t want you to feel, like…”

“I don’t,” Connor said in a rush. “I just. I meant… with me?”

Evan looked at him very strangely. “I’d like to kiss you now, okay?”

“Okay.”

Evan, considering how typically nervous he was about literally everything, seemed excessively sure about this. Connor’s brain kept providing worst case scenario reasons for this: He just wanted to sleep with someone, didn’t matter who it was. Evan was going to use this as an elaborate way to embarrass him at school on Monday. He was going to tell Jared about how weird and pale and gross he looked. Connor kept flashing back to how much of an asshole, idiot he was, texting Evan shit he’d never say to his face, being all “I like you” when he was half asleep and Evan was mumbling in his sleep and he got caught up in the idea that a cute boy had kissed him so he let himself pretend to be the kind of person cute boys kissed.

There were about fifteen thousand bad reasons that Evan might seem relatively steady in the face of something that was, objectively, kind of a big deal.

And Connor knew better than to let people get close because then they just got hurt or fucked him over and he really needed not to get himself fucked over…

But his brain kept skipping back to the memory of Evan bringing him a bag of frozen peas for his busted hand (which was starting to look less busted, at least) and.

He hadn’t scampered off when Connor had absolutely lost it at Larry’s office. He hadn’t kicked Connor out when he admitted to the shit he’d done to Zoe and the drugs. This was getting to be some real sharey carey bullshit, and Evan.

Still apparently wanted to kiss him and.

They’d both lost their shirts quickly, but it seemed that nerves had kept them both in their pants. Connor was pleased to find a light dusting of hair on Evan’s chest. And he was pretty sure Evan had given him another hickey, this time in the place where his neck met his shoulder. Feeling bold, he had at one point pulled Evan on top of him so they were bare chest to bare chest, breathing heavily, and Evan had teased him a little about how he’d had to grab Evan’s butt to pull him up.

“Um,” Connor said suddenly, breaking out of his head long enough to sit up and push Evan away a little.

“You okay?” Evan asked, his mouth sort of red, color in his cheeks.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s just…” Connor felt his face get super warm. “If we’re… I mean.” Somewhere in the back of his head a voice that sounded annoyingly like Dave From Rehab’s voice said that if you couldn’t just spit the word “sex” out, you weren’t prepared to have it. Connor took a gulp of air, reminding himself he only had a few weeks to live and the was his only chance to like actually do this. He bit down on his teeth hard, then tried again. “If we’re going to have sex, we should. Figure out what we’re doing.”

Evan looked a little confused, head tilted slightly. “Meaning?”

Connor was literally going to die from embarrassment. “Like, who’s gonna, like… top or whatever.”

“Oh!” Evan said, letting out this kind of adorable little half laugh. “Um. Yeah, I guess I… I’m okay with whatever.”

“Me too,” Connor said. “But like… you know.”

“Right, logistics, right,” Evan said, looking thoughtful. “We could… play rock paper scissors?”

“Rock paper scissors?” Connor repeated, amused.

Evan shrugged, cheeks a little pink. “I don’t know! I’ve never done this before!”

“Me either.”

“Then let’s… play rock paper scissors,” Evan said, making a fist. “Loser bottoms.”

“This is weird,” Connor said, but he also made a fist. “Two out of three or…?”

Evan smirked. “Scared you’ll lose?”

Honestly, Connor was more scared he would win. He had no idea what he was doing, and he was convinced that he'd fuck this up. “No!” Zoe always made him play two out of three. And it usually took forever when they were kids because they’d both play the same thing at the same time time. And he wasn't going to talk about his sister with Evan right this second, so he said, “Whatever, we’ll just do one then.”

“Okay. On three?”

“One-”

“-Two-”

“-Three, shoot!”

Connor played scissors, Evan played rock.

“You win,” Connor said, his heart pounding harder.

“Yeah,” Evan said, voice quiet.

“Is this, like, a terrible idea?” Connor asked then, his voice higher than he wanted it to be. “Because I… if you don’t want to we can just… forget this ever happened. And maybe just blow our brains out now?”

“No. No. I want to,” Evan said and holy shit that was hot.

Connor looked away, suddenly shy. “You’re sure?”

“Yeah.”

 

There was an awkward moment when Evan was pulling Connor’s underwear off and managed to run a few fingers over the back of Connor’s knees. Which were insanely ticklish. Like his Achilles Heel from most of his childhood because his parents could disable him easily by tickling him there.

Evan’s fingers were feather light and gentle, which sent Connor into a fit of helpless laughter, squirming and trapping himself under Evan’s arms because this whole thing was super weird and awkward and uncomfortable and funny and Evan collapsed on top of him, also laughing, but not before he tickled Connor a few more times, leaving Connor’s ankles trapped in his own boxers and the pair of them a twisted disaster.  

“Fucking hell,” Connor had laughed when they both got their shit together a little, and Evan had finally let his feet free.

There was a sobering moment when they both seemed to realize that they were both naked.

And Connor thought he was definitely going to die because Evan kissed him, hard, and then touched him and. “Fucking _hell_ , Evan.”

 

There was some fumbling and consultation of Connor’s cracked iPhone once they got down to it. Connor spent a few seconds being grateful he had showered that day, but then Evan was tearing open the condom packaging with this teeth (because his fingers were too slick and Connor’s were trembling too hard (“Where’d you learn how to do that?” “I… watched a video, once, I dunno?”). Eventually they managed to line everything up.

It was weird. It was super weird but also super good. Connor was sure he looked like an idiot, but the expression on Evan’s face was anything but idiotic. Frankly, it was so hot, Connor worried he might genuinely pass out.

  


There was a moment during when Evan kissed the side of his head and asked if he was alright. “You’re biting your lip… I’m not… are you okay?”

“Fine, I’m fine,” Connor said breathlessly, his face still screwed up in concentration. It’s just… I’m just, like… Trying… not to be…you know... _loud_.”

Evan kissed his neck and it was impossible not to be loud then. Honestly, he had never expected this to happen. He’d never ever expected it would be like _this_. Evan kept checking to make sure he wasn’t hurting Connor, and Connor honestly, stupidly, thought that even if he had been, he wouldn’t have said anything.

 

“Oh.”

“Oh?” Evan had stilled.

“That’s… _fuck,_ okay, um…” He found himself trying desperately to find something to hang onto because he was roughly a thousand percent sure he was going to disintegrate, dissolve on the spot.

“Good?” Evan asked, smiling a little.

Connor tried to nod, mumbling sheepishly, “Sorry. I… Sorry.”

Evan leaned down and kissed him. “Don’t be, I want you to feel good.”

And Connor was pretty sure he _did_ dissolve at that exact moment.

 

When all was said and done, it was. Actually pretty fantastic. Which wasn’t a word Connor had ever or would ever use genuinely again.

The thing was.

He was shaking after. His hands were trying to vibrate off of his wrists. He didn’t know why, but he just. It was just. The whole thing was just. He’d…

“Doing okay?” Evan asked. They were laying on their backs, both breathing heavily. Evan had rushed across the hall to the bathroom and cleaned them both up with a damp washcloth and now they were just laying side by side, and Connor was trying and failing not to fall apart.

“Y-yeah,” he said, but it came out shaky and weird and Evan turned toward him. And Connor turned shakily to face him. “I’m fine. R-really. Just a little… overwhelmed.”

“Okay,” Evan said, taking Connor’s cold shaky hands into his steady warm ones. “Good.”

“Good?”

“Yeah. Good.”

“Great.”

“Awesome.”

“Cool.”

They grinned at one another. And after a little while, Connor’s hands stopped shaking.

 

“Okay, don’t laugh…”

“I won’t laugh.”

“I haven’t even said it yet, Evan.” He sounded petulant and pouty, but Evan was smiling at him and. “Jesus.”

“I just won’t laugh. Promise.”

“Okay…” He let out a deep breath. Evan squirmed under him a little, which Connor really liked.. “This was kind of on my bucket list.”

“Sex?”

“Well, yeah, but… I mean. This.” Their hands were tangled together on Evan’s stomach, and Connor gave Evan’s a squeeze.

“Why?”

“Because I… I just _like_ you.”

“Don’t,” Evan said seriously.

“Why not?” Connor asked, feeling supremely stupid for saying anything at all. He braced himself for every worst case scenario, from “this doesn’t mean anything to me” to “I still like Zoe.” He braced himself.

“Just… that sounds like a bad idea.”

Oh. “Well. I’m very good at bad ideas.”

“Connor?”

“Hm?”

“I like you too.”

His heart beat so hard inside his ribs, he was sure Evan could feel it through his skin. He smiled to himself, feeling like maybe for the first time in a long time, he hadn’t screwed up.

* * *

He woke up alone in Evan’s bed, and for maybe four seconds he didn’t want to kill himself. He was tired and his body was sore, but the pillows smelled like Evan’s shampoo and weird cupcake fabric softener and the sun was sort of drifting in through the blinds and things felt alright.

A few seconds later, though, Connor realized his phone was buzzing. The cracked screen read “Mom” with an old picture of her from a few Christmases ago, laughing at the camera. Despite the fact that it was only just barely 7:30, she was calling. He answered quietly. “Hullo?”

“Hi honey,” his mom said. “I talked to your dad, and we think it’s time for you to come home. We’ll negotiate punishment for the damage to your father’s car when you get back.”

“Okay,” He said quietly. “Should I come now?”

“I would rather you wait until the afternoon,” She said, and that same tired voice she used on Friday was back. “I want to be here to… facilitate the conversation.”

She didn’t trust him not to ruin more stuff if she wasn’t there. He got it. That was a fair critique. “Okay.”

She hung up shortly, and Connor barely caught her saying goodbye. He sank back into Evan’s pillows and wished he could go back to sleep. Knowing it was a lost cause, he got out of bed, made up the pillows and blankets quickly, and pulled on one of the hoodies that they had left on Evan’s bedroom floor. He crossed the hall quietly, using the bathroom, brushing his teeth, and planning to hurry back across the hall to maybe steal one of Evan’s books and flip through it until Evan woke up. He’d already beaten down an idiotic thought he’d entertained for a second, of going and cuddling up next to Evan for a while. That had been… nice. It was sort of relaxing or whatever. But Connor knew better. It was something not meant for mornings; something done at night so you could pretend it was a dream.

He dried his face quickly on a towel, but when he stepped out of the bathroom, he found Heidi in a hoodie and sweats, her hair in a ponytail, looking at him, frowning.

 _Shit_.

“Good morning,” She said. “You’re awake early.”

“Um. I.”

“Everything okay?”

Connor nodded stupidly, mumbling something about needing to use the bathroom.

Heidi’s face relaxed then. She gave him a soft, sleepy smile. “Well, I’m going to get some water and go back to bed for a while. I forgot to turn off my alarm from last weekend. It’s Sunday and I think I ought to sleep in.”

He nodded, shoving his hands into the pockets of his hoodie. He started back toward Evan’s room, but then Heidi started talking again. “Connor, honey, I just… I wanted to tell you how glad I am that you and Evan are…” She paused for the slightest of seconds, like she was carefully choosing her words. “Spending time together.”

He waited for her to say more. For her to fish for more details, start making accusations.

“I mean, he’s… got Jared and stuff, so…” He shrugged because like. It wasn’t like he was the only person Evan ever spent time with.

Heidi smiled wider.  “I know, but. Well. It’s nice to see he’s got a _close_ friend in you.”

Connor had no fucking clue why she’d say _that_.

Connor reached up, fingers fiddling awkwardly with one of the studs in his right ear. “Me, uh. Me too.” _Shit_ , that didn’t make sense. “I’m, um. Glad we’re friends too.” He cleared his throat. “He’s. Nice. I don’t… I’m sure my mom mentioned…” He trailed off as Heidi looked at him, listening like she actually gave a shit about what he was going to say next. Connor swallowed down that hopeful feeling. “I’m just glad he’s my friend.”

Heidi smiled at him, almost fondly. “I’m glad he’s your friend too.” Connor took it like a punch in the gut. It hurt. Hurt.

Connor was going to ruin this nice lady’s life. She’d fed him and let him sleep under her roof, she talked to him about stuff like Nirvana and acted like she cared what he had to say,  and he was going to take her kid away from her. He was such an asshole. Such a monster. He should take his car and take a dive off the water tower now before he made this worse.

“I know things at home aren’t great right now,” Heidi went on. “So I want you to know you’re always welcome here, alright?”

Connor stopped twisting at his earring. He realized, distantly, that’s he’d been pulling at it and now his ear was sore and warm to the touch. “Oh.” He honestly didn’t know what to say to that.

“I’m serious,” Heidi said, and she sounded it too. “You can come here, anytime.”

“Thank you,” he mumbled, shifting his eyes to the floor. Guilt was choking him, filling up his lungs and tightening a noose around his throat.

“Sleep in a bit,” She said, giving him a smile. “You look like you could use it.”

Connor nodded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is from Fall Out Boy's "Sugar We're Going Down."


	5. Two More Weeks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connor Murphy is very ill.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note there is a content warning for self harm and suicidal thoughts this chapter.

Connor woke up Monday morning with a sore throat and a fever. 

He was starting to think he was literally making himself sick with guilt. 

Being allowed back in the house was actually worse than being exiled, Connor noted. He ought to be used to that by now. His mom walked on eggshells, Zoe glared at him, and his dad pretended he didn’t exist. The Lexus had been repaired; he knew that because he saw it in the garage when he came home. Connor still didn’t know whether he was on the hook for that money. Or if he was grounded. Or anything. Nobody was talking to him.

When his alarm sounded on Monday morning and Connor had a sore throat and a fever, he shut the alarm off. Waited until his mom started banging at the door, yelling at him to get out of bed. 

“I’m sick,” he announced. His mom rolled her eyes. When he first started cutting school,  he got “sick” a lot.  Big skills test in gym class? He’d fake the stomach flu. Gotten high instead of doing literally any homework and it was the end of the quarter? Migraine. His mom started to worry that he was sick enough to take him to a doctor after freshman year, so then he had to just skip class outright. The last time his mom had tried to take him to a doctor when something was obviously wrong, Connor had just gotten suspended for dislocating a kid’s jaw. He had spilled his guts to a therapist only to not be allowed to go back. 

He wasn’t stupid enough to think a doctor could help him anymore. 

Eventually though, his mom came in with a thermometer and determined he was, in fact, sick. “Jesus, I really didn’t need this today,” She muttered to herself, rubbing her temples.

“I can just stay home,” He said. He was tired. He just wanted to go back to sleep. 

“No,” His mom said, frowning. “You can’t. Not after the stunt you pulled last week.”

Connor really hated her then. Just for a second. He couldn’t ever  _ really _ stay angry at her. She was in a shitty situation, with a shitty kid. She didn’t deserve that. He knew. 

His mom sighed. She walked out of the room and when she came back, it was with a mug of tea and a frown. “Your Auntie Chris is going to come over.”

Connor glared at his mom. “I’m eighteen. I don’t need a babysitter.”

His mother raised her eyebrows. “You most certainly do,” his mom answered. “If you want to be treated like you’re an adult, you’ll act like one.”

“Right.”

“And since you’ve proved you  _ can’t  _ do that, Chris will be here shortly.”

She stormed off to go to hot yoga or whatever the fuck else it was that she did during the week. Connor hated it when she got like this, but he knew it was his own damn fault. He always pushed a little too far, and she’d suddenly side with Fucking Larry. She’d backtrack in a couple of days, but in the meantime Connor had to suffer.

Connor gathered up his tea and blankets to go be pissed off on the sofa downstairs. He didn’t know why, exactly. Just whenever he was sick as a kid, he usually camped out on the couch and now… 

He had a stuffy nose, a sore throat, and a plan to kill himself. 

He thought about texting Evan. But whenever he texted Evan he got all soft and sad and almost hopeful, and Connor didn’t have the energy to untangle that. He just slouched against the couch and surfed through the DVR until found a recording of  _ Titanic _ from a few weeks back. He pressed play, half watching as the dive team at the beginning started to pull things out of the wrecked ship. He wondered what kinds of artifacts might be pulled out of the wreckage of his life. 

A couple of books and a collection of Bic lighters. Not a whole lot else. 

He woke up a while later (Rose and Jack were already having sex in the old car under the main decks), and he heard a gruff laugh beside him. Connor jumped. His Auntie Chris was on her tablet, shaking her head. “Oh, morning, beanpole. Welcome back.”

Connor scowled at her. The nickname started around the eighth grade when Connor went from being one of the shortest kids in class to one of the tallest in the space of a year. He didn’t remember what his Aunt Chris was doing that year; she stayed with them for a bit, then moved back to his grandma’s.

She was sort of a trainwreck for a long time. 

“Don’t you have… like a job now?”

His Aunt Chris smiled. “I’m working remotely.”

“So they let you have the wifi password this time,” Connor said. 

Chris shook her head. “That was during Cyndi’s whole unplugging thing, I dunno.” Connor thought it was super weird that his Aunt Chris called his mom “Cyndi” but it was just. A thing she did. Like how he called Zoe “Zo” for most of their lives. Connor didn’t know why but it made him uncomfortable. Sometimes he thought it might be easier if his mom was just a mom.

“How’s Larry?” Chris asked. 

“Pissed.”

“I figured as much,” She said. Connor thought she seemed like she was trying to hide a smile. He knew she didn’t get along with Larry, but ever since she had moved out of his grandma’s she acted like she didn’t condone juvenile property damage. “Are you grounded?”

Connor shrugged. He figured, but nobody had actually spoken to him long enough to hand down punishment.  

Chris kinda gave him a smile. “Sorry you’re stuck with me today.”

He shrugged. As far as babysitters went, Chris wasn’t the worst person to deal with, honestly. When he was a kid, she was always the fun babysitter. She’d let him and Zoe stay up late. They used to go stay with her in the city when they were younger, and she’d pump them with sugar and soda before sending them home. They’d play pretend games and watch PG-13 movies and in general get to run around like wild animals until their parents picked them up. They stopped staying with her sometime after Connor turned ten. 

Nobody ever said why. He’d pieced together that Auntie Chris had had some kind of a mental breakdown, but he didn’t know much about it. 

“So, make any friends in rehab?”

Connor groaned, pulling his blanket over his head. She was… he didn’t know what. She was just  _ trying _ and it sucked because now he had to remember there was another person who was probably going to be pissed off at him for being dead. Which wasn’t fucking fair. 

“Sorry, bad joke.”

“It’s fine,” He mumbled. 

Chris patted his ankle, then announced she was going to find some soup or something for him to eat, and Connor passed out again, listening to her looking around in the kitchen. He really felt like shit. 

When he woke up back, Chris was watching some shitty daytime TV thing. “You look like shit.”

“Thanks.”

“Want anything to eat?”

“No.” His throat was killing him. 

“Who’s Evan Hansen?”

Connor felt his heart drop. “What?”

“He’s blowing up your phone,” Chris said, smiling at him. “Or she? They? Is Evan one of those names that you can do for a girl now? Like Evan Rachel Wood?”

“Evan’s a boy,” Connor heard himself mumble, wishing very very much that he was not on this couch or this earth. Because he knew his face had started to turn red. He knew how fucking obvious he was being.

“Is that the friend you stayed with this weekend?” 

Connor nodded. 

Fucking. His Aunt Chris was gay, and Connor knew that, but it was sort of a thing that nobody talked about. She never brought over girlfriends or whatever. She had a “roommate” for a while when they were kids, but that was before she moved back in with their grandma. 

If this were some after school special sitcom type of bullshit, he’d awkwardly come out to his aunt right now and confess all about the sex over the weekend. She’d be all nice and understanding and walk him through “safer sex practices” with a laugh track, and then, after a tearful moment of deliberating, he’d tell her how he and Evan met, for real. She’d cry and he’d cry, and they’d promise to get help for him and the whole thing would end in thirty painless minutes with a tag at the end about the suicide hotline. 

In the movie version of his life, Connor’s Auntie Chris stepped in and saved him. 

Connor spent a lot of his teens being pissed that he wasn’t getting the movie version of things. Or even the book version, which was just a little darker, a little shittier, but still had the happy ending. 

But he gave up on movie versions. On anyone saving him. Nobody was going to wear a cape around him anyway. He didn’t deserve it. 

In reality, Chris just smiled awkwardly at Connor, and then asked if he wanted anymore tea. He said sure, and she made him some. Told him to talk some cold meds. And they just sat there mostly in silence. Nobody saved anybody. Connor stared at Evan’s texts for a while before going back to his bedroom to sleep. His mom was back home by the time he woke up. She finally seemed to believe he felt like shit because she had lightened up on the hardass act from that morning. She even let him skip dinner. 

“Go take a hot shower,” She’d said. “And I’ll give you some Nyquil before bed.”

Because she had to hand out single doses because he was a fuckup and spent the last year high because he’d broken her heart and made it so that nothing was normal, that she’d never trust him ever again. 

Evan texted him at some point earlier that day. “Am I allowed to worry about you? I don’t care. I am. Text me back please.”

Connor had read the text so many times he was starting to think that the words would leave a scar on his eyeballs. They’d do his autopsy and find out that Evan was worried about Connor one day in October. 

Connor. 

He had to get out of this plan with Evan. He had to fix this, fuck this up, get Evan to back down. He could manage to find a way out for himself, but Evan. 

Evan was  _ good _ . 

He was kind, and weird, he liked trees too much and didn’t like baseball even though he tried to like it for his dad, and he had a fucking chance to be normal. To get out of this situation. He could grow up, go to college, get a girlfriend, be a  _ person _ . 

Not like Connor who was always meant to become a skeleton.

Connor chewed his lip and thought about how to stop Evan from killing himself. He thought about calling Evan’s mom and confessing everything. He thought about telling someone at school. He thought about picking a fight, maybe hitting Evan or something stupid, something to push him far enough away. He thought about doing all of it. 

He thought about killing himself because that’s what he always fucking did. It was the only thing he was actually good at, anyway. He thought he could get away with sneaking off to the water tower early. If he could get his keys away from his mom.

But the Nyquil kicked in, and Connor did nothing.

* * *

 

The next morning he woke up. His throat was still sore and his head felt like shit, but he dragged himself out of bed. Showered. Got dressed. 

He sat in his room for a bit. He felt antsy, stupid. He picked at one of his newer scabs, realizing his knife was nowhere to be found. He’d lost it or Evan had it or whatever. He didn’t know where it was. 

That was annoying.

Everything in his head was static and shitty and he picked picked picked picked picked until he saw blood, until the static faded, until he could breathe without it being ragged, choppy.

He couldn’t skip school today. 

He couldn’t spend another day stuck at home like this. 

He had to talk to Evan. He had to talk Evan out of their plan. He had to do it right now. 

“Feeling better?” His mom asked when he went down to breakfast. She sounded stressed, timid. 

“Fine,” He said, putting his head down on the table. 

“Are you sure?” She pressed, “You still look a little pale.” She put a hand to his forehead, and Connor tried to flinch away, and that was the moment that Mount St. Larry apparently decided he was no longer dormant. 

“Cynthia.” 

Connor knew that tone. That was the tone that meant he ought to be packing his bags. This was, “Jesus Christ Cynthia, he’s not a newborn.”

He didn’t bother to look up. 

“You know, in military school they teach discipline. They teach you how to be respectful at meals that your parents paid for.”

“Larry, not this again.”

“I just mean, apparently, he needs some kind of structure. We’re certainly doing him no good with you hovering all the time.”

“Not now, please.”

Connor closed his eyes. His dad kept ranting about how he was cracked, nuts, a liability (literally, that was what he said, like Connor was some kind of insurance claim). 

“He’s not feeling well, can’t you just let up for today?”   


“I’ve been letting up and letting you call the shots since he got out of rehab, and look where that’s gotten us.”

“Guys, enough-”

“You coddle him and he’s acting out. First we have the stunt in September, now this. If this is you taking point Cynthia-”

“Don’t talk to her like that,” Connor said, quiet. 

“Oh, so now he speaks.”

“Larry-”

“I said,” Connor repeated. “Don’t talk to mom like that.”

“Connor, baby, maybe go back up to your room. You’re not feeling better yet, I can tell-” His mom was trying, failing, to calm the situation but the whole room felt like there was electricity in the air and Connor was crackling, losing it. 

He had to get the fuck out of here. 

“Fine,” he said, shoving away from the table. 

“Not so fast, I’m not done talking to you yet. When do you plan to pay me back for the car, Connor? When are you going to learn some god damn responsibility-” Larry’s hand closed over Connor’s forearm, hard, harder than Connor expected, and despite himself he yelped in pain. 

Larry let go fast. 

And his fingers had blood on them. 

Everything stopped. 

His dad looked at his fingers, then at Connor, and he knew he ought to run up the stairs, mumble some kind of excuse, escape, but he was frozen, caught, trapped. 

His dad said, in this eerie, weird calm voice, “Roll up your sleeve.”

“No.”

“Connor,” His dad said, voice creepily even. “Roll. Up. Your. Sleeve.”

Connor’s eyes darted to his mom, to Zoe, both of whom looked confused, unsure. 

He rolled up his sleeve. 

The scab he’d picked off had been a bit of a deep cut. 

It was nothing compared to the collection of others. Pink scars, white scars, bumpy reddish brown scabs and a wash of red watercolor, of blood, across his arm. 

His mom started crying like. Right away. 

Zoe looked sick. 

His dad stared, then said, gruffly, that he was going to be late for work. 

Connor pulled down his sleeve gingerly, pulling it until his hand and fingers were covered, wishing he could make the rest of him disappear from sight as quickly. 

He went up to his room. Laid down. 

Wished for the thousandth time that Zoe had been playing music, that his dad hadn’t been home in September. That he’d had just a few more minutes to finish the job. 

Maybe twenty minutes later, his mom was in his room. She didn’t knock or say a word, she just started trashing it, going through all of his stuff. 

“I’m not on drugs,” Connor mumbled. “You took them all this summer.” He  _ did _ have a dimebag somewhere, but he doubted she’d find it. 

His mom turned to look at him. Her face was red, blotchy; she’d been crying. Here he was, making his mom cry, again.  “I’ve made some calls. We’re seeing some doctors today.”

Connor closed his eyes. Great. Just. Great. “Okay,” he said. 

“How long has this been going on, Connor?”

He stared at her. She didn’t know. She really didn’t. Connor watched her try to count backwards, try to recall the last time she’d seen him with short sleeves. Even in the hospital last month, he wouldn’t see her until they gave him his sweatshirt back to wear. 

What was he supposed to tell her? Was he meant to announce that this had been happening off and on since middle school? Was he supposed to break her heart like that? He didn’t know. He didn’t say anything. 

“Be ready to go in an hour,” She said, leaving his bedroom tearfully. 

Connor could hear her voice downstairs, probably on the phone, and he parked himself at the top of the stairs to listen. He and Zoe used to do it a lot, when they were little, when their parents argued. Before they started trying to drown them out. Before they decided to drown each other out. 

His mom came and collected him at about nine. He didn’t bother asking if there was any chance he might get some cold medicine. 

Maybe this was a way to get Evan out of this. Maybe. 

His mom kept having to wake him up after various appointments with many, many doctors. One of them wanted him to consider hypnosis. One of them was kind of creepily religious and talked about crystals. A third wanted to send him to a “residential treatment facility.”

Connor didn’t intend to stay alive that long. 

The final appointment was with Dr. Collins, Connor’s regular shrink. She wasn’t smiling when Connor got there. She frowned hard when she told his mom that she didn’t believe it was appropriate for her to be in the room when she met with Connor. 

He did have to appreciate that, honestly. 

She skipped the pleasantries, the “what should we talk about today” song and dance. Instead she leaned forward, pushed a box of kleenex across the coffee table between them, and waited. 

If he had any energy, he’d have sat there, silent, waiting her out. 

But he didn’t. 

“I didn’t want them to know,” He said.

“I see.”

“It’s been happening since I was thirteen.”

She nodded. 

“My dad already knew. He just. Pretended he didn’t.”

“That sounds really hard.”

“It… yeah.”

She asked him point blank if he was suicidal. 

He downplayed it, but that was about all he had in him to do. “Sometimes,” he said. “I’d rather not wake up.” 

He didn’t say, “I think about it all the time.” 

He didn’t say, “I have a plan for two weeks from now.” 

He said none of that. 

“I think we need to develop a safety plan, Connor.”

He nodded. He did what he was told. 

The written plan he received came with a handwritten prescription for an SSRI that he was told to give to his parents immediately. “Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.” Connor shook his head, and Dr. Collins had said, “I know your parents aren’t keen on the idea, but I think things have reached a point where medication is necessary.”

He folded up the plan page and put it in his pocket when he was released to the waiting room.

“Can we please go home?”

His mom agreed.

* * *

 

When he got home, Connor stripped off his hoodie because there was nothing to hide  anymore. Then he fell back on his bed and drifted in and out of sleep.  He heard the doorbell ring, but Connor couldn’t bring himself to get up and look to see who it could possibly be. 

There was a knock, soft and tentative on his door. Or the frame. There was no door. And Evan was there, looking worried, frowning, tugging at his shirt. 

“Who told you?” Connor asked him.

“Zoe.”   


“Damn.”   


“Can I come in?”   


Connor nodded, sitting up. He tried to look like he hadn’t spent the day wallowing. He knew he failed.    


“Can I ask what happened?”   


Connor shrugged. Evan moved to sit next to him. Closer than he needed to, closer than he should have. He reached over and gently took Connor’s hand, holding it in his own. Evan’s hands were warm. Connor felt his throat get uncomfortably tight for a moment. Was this the feeling that came before crying? He didn’t remember anymore. He shut all of that down.    


“It was just my dad, being an asshole as usual.”   


“I’m sorry.” Evan looked at him, head tilted a little. “I heard that you’re sick?”   


“Oh yeah,” Connor said. He shook his head; he’d almost forgotten. “I have the flu. I spent most of the day sleeping between doctor’s appointments.”   


“Sucks.” Evan kissed the back of his hand. It sent shivers down Connor’s spine.    


“Careful, I’ll infect you.”   


Evan laughed quietly. “We’re probably past that point.” He did this thing where he brushed his thumb over Connor’s fingers, the bumps of his knuckles, the swelling finally having gone down. “I’m sorry. About the bad day.”   


“Thanks.” He was so tired. He leaned his head against Evan’s shoulder. “Can you stay for a little while? I need a break from them and I’m on house arrest until further notice.” He didn’t actually  _ know _ that, but it was sort of what usually happened. 

“Yeah. I’ll stay.”

Evan smelled nice; that shampoo and cupcake softener. He was warm. He talked in a soft voice, and the shirt he was wearing was well worn and soft. Connor wanted to kiss him but he was too scared of what it might mean.   


“My mom is so freaked out,” he told Evan after a while.

“I know. I saw her when I walked in. She didn’t look good.” He said it like he didn’t want to offend.

“I fucked up.” Again. Again and again and again. All he did was fuck up.   


“No, hey, it’s fine.” Evan’s arm was around his shoulders then, squeezing him tight before it dropped to his waist, pulling Connor tight to Evan’s side. “We’ll figure it out.” 

No. That wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted Evan to tell him they could stop now, they could reconsider, that they were done. Connor couldn’t do this with him. He couldn’t. Not with Evan. He had to keep Evan alive.

* * *

 

He went back to school on Wednesday. 

He felt like shit on a molecular level. 

“Hey.” Somehow he found himself standing face to face with Evan.

“Oh. Hi.”

“You… you good?” Evan was biting his lip. He looked pale and scared and Connor waited. Waited waited waited. He had to call it off, he had to cry uncle, he had to back off. 

Evan didn’t. 

“Shouldn’t have complained.” He frowned. “They’ll never let me out of the house now,” Connor muttered. He turned and went to class.

* * *

Evan didn’t show up to school on Thursday.

He just. 

Didn’t show up. 

Zoe seemed to gather that something was up. “You okay?”

Connor shrugged. “Fine.”

“He’s probably just out sick,” She said, her voice reasonable and even and normal because under normal circumstances, Evan might have just been out sick. 

“Yeah. Probably.”

Connor skipped his gym class that afternoon (because seriously, he wasn’t actually going to go to gym) to track down Jared Kleinman. 

Jared like… jumped when he saw him. There were some nice things about having the reputation of being a psychopath, Connor figured.

“Have you heard from Evan?”

Jared squinted at him, like he was being weird, and it was taking genuinely all of Connor’s willpower not to just deck him and call it a day. “No. He texted me this morning saying he was sick. His mom let him stay home”

Connor nodded. “Cool, thanks.”

“You okay, man?”

Connor rolled his eyes and walked away before he had to deal with anymore of Jared’s idiocy. 

He went to his physics class that afternoon, finding himself kind of wishing Alana Beck had shown up again. Last week she had been a mess, but…. She was nice, Connor thought. He hoped she felt better. 

Which was hypocritical, he knew. Hoping she felt better when there was no chance he would ever manage that. Suddenly Connor wished he hadn’t been such a shitty lab partner in tenth grade. Or that he hadn’t been high the whole time they worked on that Huck Finn project. 

It just might be nice if somebody would remember him for something other than causing trouble. But it was too late for that now.

* * *

 

He didn’t sleep that night. He just couldn’t think about closing his eyes because he was convinced that might be the moment when Evan might fucking text him back. 

Connor thought about trying to sneak out, to go check on Evan, but honestly… he was scared of what he might find. 

Connor didn’t want to go over there and see and ambulance or Heidi Hansen crumpled like a piece of discarded paper, crushed from the weight of losing Evan. 

Because Connor was half convinced that Evan had figured him out, deduced his flakiness, and left him here alone. 

He just wanted it to stop. 

He wished that he’d never made that stupid fucking post on that website, because there didn’t seem to be a way out anymore. 

Connor didn’t sleep. He scoured CatchingTheTrain.com all night, hoping that secretly someone had written up a guide on how to stop your suicide partner from killing themselves (in five easily steps!). There was nothing. The message boards said that a pair in D.C. had managed it. Killed themselves. 

How did the poster actually know that? Was there a third person involved to report back?

Connor rubbed his face roughly. What the fuck was he going to do? Was there any way he could stop Evan without getting them both caught? 

“Morning.” 

Connor jumped; his mom was knocking on his doorframe. She smiled at him, but it quickly turned into a frown. “Were you up all night?”   


Connor shook his head, because lying to her was all he knew how to do. “Just. Woke up before my alarm.”

“Well… I wanted to talk to you.”

Connor braced for impact. 

“I think… I think I overreacted the other day,” She said. “Forcing you to stay home isn’t… going to fix this problem.”   


Connor stared. 

“So if you want, you can go over to Evan’s after school. If you’re home for dinner.”

Connor nodded. “Okay.”   


“And you can have your keys back.”

“Thanks.”

He skipped breakfast, basically, just sitting down for a second and pushing a piece of toast around. His mom announced again that Connor could go over to Evan’s after school. His dad said nothing. Zoe said nothing. Connor got up from the table then, lying and saying he had to return something to library so that he could leave for school early. Connor didn’t even realize he’d shown up looking more like shit than usual until Brian Harris checked his shoulder in the hall, scoffing at his glasses. Like they were in seventh grade again. His buddy Josh Carter started to laugh, but Connor shot him a look and he muttered, “Let’s get out of here,” to Brian.

There were some perks of having dislocated that kid’s jaw. 

Connor waited by Evan’s locker for twenty minutes, with each tick of the clock making him flinch. Where the hell was he? What the fuck was going on? 

The bell rang, warning everyone that they only had five minutes to get to class, but Connor stayed put. He wasn’t going anywhere until he fucking saw Evan. 

With two minutes until the last bell, Evan turned up, frowning down at his phone. He gave Connor a stranger look, and Connor… Couldn’t help himself. He launched himself at Evan, grabbing him in a tight hug, because thank fucking god. He was alive. He was alive. 

“You fucking scared me,” he said, his voice coming out all rough and jagged and fucked up. Connor let him go and walked off toward his class before he started saying some other shit he wasn’t prepared to deal with thinking about.

* * *

 

He went over to Evan’s after school because he was stupid and had no spine and even with this whole two-weeks-to-live nonsense hanging over his head, Connor couldn’t seem to turn down the chance to be alone with him. 

Which was why he went up to Evan’s room with him. 

Which was why he stayed in Evan’s room when he heard Heidi’s voice from downstairs, after Evan said he’d be right back and gave him a kiss. 

There was something sort of desperate about the way Connor was trying to pretend all of this was normal, functional. 

Which was why Connor followed Evan out into the hall, to the top of the steps, where he watched Evan excitedly tear open an envelope. 

He couldn’t really process what was happening with Evan and his mom, but they both seemed happy, excited, pleased, and he heard his own voice cut into the celebration, stupidly, saying, “What did you win?”

“Oh… uh,” Evan looked uncomfortable, handing a piece of paper to Connor. “That scholarship essay contest?”

Connor forgot to smile for just a second, because he was just… so relieved. “Congrats, man. Cool.”

“Thanks.”

“Well, I should get going,” Connor said quickly, “My parents are expecting me…”

“You’re not staying for dinner?” Evan’s mom asked him, looking a little down.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I can’t,” Connor said, but his voice wasn’t coming out right, it was hollow and weird. “I left my bag in your room,” He said, to Evan, and then dashed up the steps. 

He gave himself four seconds to get his shit together in Evan’s room, stooping to grab his bag. 

Connor’s eyes caught on a small box on Evan’s bedside table. Connor crossed the room, and opened the box, and yeah. There, inside the box, were two bottles of prescription medication. 

“We should celebrate!” Connor heard Heidi say from downstairs. He closed the box, rushed don the steps, and when he got to the bottom of the stairs, he said a short “Bye” before heading out the front door. 

Connor felt relieved. Evan… he was such a flake that he probably didn’t have to worry anymore. 

But. 

Well. 

It was stupid, Connor realized, but. 

He was jealous that Evan had things to look forward to. 

And then…

Connor realized as he pulled out of the Hansens’ driveway… That Evan wouldn’t ever flake and let Connor go off on his own. 

He was so so stupid. 

Evan was a good person, he was a decent human who would do things like try to save him, and Connor. 

Didn’t want to be saved. 

And he didn’t want Evan to feel like he had to save him. 

He sighed. 

The best thing to do, Connor determined, was to just do it now. Get it over with right now. Before Evan could try to stop him, before Evan could take it out on himself. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Title is from Fall Out Boy's "Saturday."


	6. Weathervanes My One and Lonely

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connor and Evan visit the Autumn Smile Apple Orchard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright kiddos, here's the final chapter. Goes best with chapter 16 of The Desperate Type. 
> 
> Please read the notes at the end.

When he got home, Connor headed straight to his bedroom, ignoring his mom and Larry and just. Threw himself on his bed.

From the next bedroom, Connor could hear Zoe playing her guitar. Usually he’d be a dick, bang on the walls, play his own music loud to drown her out. 

But he liked this song. Zoe had played it a lot when she was first learning guitar, Connor remembered, because it was a song she really loved and really wanted to play. 

He didn’t realize she’d ever learned it. Because he never asked. 

Connor had woken up in rehab one afternoon over the summer with the song stuck in his head, and when he got time to check his email, he plugged the couple of words he could remember into google. 

It returned a song called “Northern Downpour.” Connor had put the song on his phone once he got back from rehab. 

The song was the sort of calm that Connor himself had never been. He was jagged and broken and angry; this song talked about being that way in a soothing voice with gentle guitar. 

It was weird. 

His listened to it over and over again, as Zoe kept playing it, and he could hear her singing quietly and he didn’t interrupt.

* * *

 

In the early hours of the morning, when sensible people were asleep, Connor Murphy made up his mind. 

He had one last thing he needed to do, and then he was going to let himself off the hook. It might be selfish and stupid and painful for the people who had made the mistake of caring about him, but Connor knew it was time. 

He pulled on a hat and some gloves, and hesitating for a second, he wrapped his red scarf around his neck, then stole his car keys off the hook in his parents’ room, before sneaking out of the house. He backed out with his car in neutral, no lights, and took off down the street, heading to Evan’s house. He made a pit stop at a convenience store along the way; it was near the highway and stayed open all night. He filled a thermos with coffee before driving the rest of the way to Evan’s house. 

Connor figured, since he was pathetically in love with Evan, and it was his fault that Evan was wrapped up in this fucked up situation, he owed him a decent goodbye. 

He owed him more than that, but a goodbye was what Connor could give. 

Connor parked on the street outside Evan’s house, calling Evan’s phone when he parked.

“Hello?” Evan’s sleepy, raspy voice answered after a few rings. 

“Oh good,” Connor said, smiling to himself. “I was afraid I’d have to throw rocks at your windows.”   


“Connor it’s…” He could hear Evan rolling over in bed to look at his clock.“It’s five am.”   


“Leave your mom and note and meet me outside. I want to go somewhere.”   


“It’s the middle of the night.”   


“No it is very early in the morning.”    


Evan groaned. It was adorable. Connor knew he was in too deep, because he thought Evan being in a bad mood in the morning was adorable. He thought Evan was adorable in every way. He was pathetically in too deep.   


He brushed past Evan’s grumpiness, saying, “I have coffee and one last thing on my bucket list. Please?”   


A heavy sigh, but then Evan’s voice said, “Alright.”   


“It’s kind of cold. Wear a hat,” Connor added. 

“Okay.”

A few minutes passed. Connor lit a cigarette, keeping an eye out to make sure they didn’t wake up Evan’s mom.    


Evan appeared outside, wearing a hat, and looking shocked by the cold of the morning. Connor wanted to kiss him, but figured it might be rude since he was literally smoking. 

Evan beat him to it.    


“Where are we going?” Evan asked when they parted.    


“Please, I’m not spoiling the surprise.”

* * *

The orchard was outside of town, not too far from the water tower, ironically. But it took some time to get there, even with nobody else on the road. He asked Evan to pick the music, and then asked him, “Do you have a favorite song?” 

Evan shrugged. “I don’t know. Nobody’s ever asked.” 

Nobody had ever asked Connor, either. But that still made him angry. Evan deserved better. So much better. “Well, if you had to name one,” Connor pressed. 

“Uh. My mom listened to almost exclusively the Beatles after my dad left?” He explained. “Which you’d think would make me hate them… But I don’t. But I can’t pick one favorite. Maybe one or two…”

“So what are they?” Connor needed to know this.    


“ _ Here Comes the Sun, Eight Days a Week, You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away. _ ”

Connor found himself smiling, “That last one is supposedly about their manager being gay.” He had read that online, once upon a time. He didn’t know if it was true, but he thought it was a good story. 

“Really?” Evan sounded so genuinely curious, so surprised. 

“Yeah.”

Evan smiled at him. And Connor smiled back. 

“And what about you? What’s your favorite song?”

Connor shrugged. He named the songs with the highest play counts on his phone, “ _ Lithium _ , by Nirvana. Or  _ Found Out About You  _ by the Gin Blossoms. Or  _ Anna Begins  _ by the Counting Crows, but I’ll deny I ever listened to it.” Shrek had ruined that band’s reputation, but it didn’t have to wreck Connor’s. “Or there’s this, like, one song that Zoe used to play all the time when we were kids? I think it’s called  _ Northern Downpour.  _ It has this line… I dunno. I like it. It goes like… uh, hang on…” He hummed to himself, trying to find the notes even though his voice was thin and high and not especially tuneful. “It goes, ‘I know the world’s a broken bone / but melt your headaches, call it home.’”

“I like that,” Evan said. He looked earnest. 

“I never looked it up until I was in rehab…” Fuck. He immediately wished he could take that back. Evan didn’t have to hear rehab stories. “Sorry you don’t want to hear about that.”

Evan shot him a look, one that seemed to tell Connor he was wrong in more ways than one. “I do. I really do.”

Connor felt a nervous smile tugging at his lips. But, whatever Evan wanted, he would get today. “Okay…” Connor stopped, trying to clear away the gummy quality of his voice. “I never listened to like… the band that played it until this summer, in rehab?” That was true. He knew the band, but not super well, just a song or two. But he found the song and when he got home he devoured their entire discography.  _ Northern Downpour _ was still his favorite. “And I just kept listening to it. Because for like a few seconds it felt like I could get through… stuff.” He shrugged. It was stupid. 

“Do you have it? Can we listen to it?”

“Yeah, I think I have it on my phone…”

Without being asked, Evan picked up Connor’s cellphone. And after a couple of minutes of fiddling, pressed play. The song flooded the car, and the pair of them stayed quiet, listening to the words as they floated into the car. 

“ _ You are at the top of my lungs…. Drawn to the ones who never yawn.” _

* * *

 

The goal Connor had in mind was to make Evan happy. Not just to distract him. To give him a good day. It had kind of worked out with Zoe, Connor figured. If he gave Evan a good day, then he wouldn’t be weighed down by guilt tomorrow. 

Evan looked pale in the dark. And a little smaller. Connor liked the way his freckles stood out in the weak morning sunshine. 

“Where are we?” Evan asked him, looking around as if there was a sign he had missed on the way in just now. 

“I want you to see this,” Connor explained, pulling a blanket from the back of his car. He used to keep that back there because sometimes he’d get too high to come home. “Come on.”

“Are we trespassing?” Evan sounded half amused, half concerned at the idea.

“Only technically. Here, hand me the coffee. I’ll help you over.” 

“I can get over it myself,” Evan muttered indignantly, but he still grabbed onto Connor’s hand. Connor laughed at him, and Evan mumbled “shut up.” It made Connor smile. 

And then made him frown. He would miss this. He would miss Evan. 

Not for the first time, he hoped that nothing happened when you died. He couldn’t stand the idea of missing this forever. 

They walked a while. Connor knew the way because he used to come and get high here sometimes last year. He could stumble this path in the dark, stoned out of his mind.

Evan said, “This is giving me serious _Blair Witch_ vibes.”

And Connor laughed. “God, you’re such a dork. I love you.” The words were out of his mouth before Connor could stop them, and he felt Evan pause beside him for a moment. He waited to see if he was going to be called out.  _ Shit, fuck. _ He wasn’t supposed to admit that. That was like… the opposite of the plan for today. He didn’t even know if that was strictly true. Saying “I love you” was saying goodbye, and the goal was that Evan wouldn’t notice the goodbye until Connor was already dead. 

Fuck. 

Not to mention that he was positive Evan wouldn’t want Connor’s love. Which was fine, really. Connor knew it was dark, twisted, ugly and half formed. It wasn’t good. Evan deserved good. 

So it was for the best that Evan said nothing. It stung, just a bit, but honestly. 

Connor was so used to these disappointments that he could push past it easily. He just pressed on, winding through the trees until they finally reached the clearing. It was huge and open, with trees surrounding it on all sides. 

“Okay, here we are.”

Evan looked at him, confused. 

“I think we should watch the sun come up,” Connor said.

“Where are we?” Evan asked again. Connor could see Evan’s breath, and he hurried to help lay the blanket on the ground. Evan didn’t sound annoyed or scared, but curious. 

“Uh, it’s the old apple orchard? I think it closed a few years ago. My... my family used to home here for picnics when I was a kid. Zoe and I would hunt for four leaf clovers, and we had this… this stupid toy plane. Which we were fighting over one, and then my dad took the controller and crashed the thing.”

“Oh,” Evan’s face wrinkled into a frown. “I’m sorry.”

“I tried to run away. I decided I was going to live here, in the apple orchard. Like Johnny Appleseed,” Connor went on, smiling a little. It wasn’t really a happy memory, but it wasn’t one of the bad ones.

“Johnny Appleseed?” Evan was smiling too. 

“Yeah. Did you know that the real guy actually roamed around, trying to convert indigenous people to Christianity?  It was fucked up.” Evan laughed. An upside of Connor’s wasted hours on wikipedia. “But when I was little, I thought it just meant eating a lot of apples and living in the woods.”

“How long did you run away for?”

“Like… maybe an hour? My mom absolutely lost it when she found me.”   


“Hmmm.” 

They sat down on the blanket, huddling close together, Evan leaning back into Connor’s chest. Connor’s fingers and toes were freezing, but Evan kept taking his hands, one at a time, and trying to warm them up between his own hands. Evan had nice hands, Connor thought. They were warm and big and not too soft. They kept him warmer than the thermos of coffee.

After maybe fifteen minutes, the sun finally shone over the horizon. The sight was pretty dazzling, Connor had to admit. He hadn’t ever watched this sober. He was happy to see it held up without the drugs. Evan’s face lit up too as the gray morning light turned golden and warm, turning all of the leaves on the trees to vibrant, magic marker yellows and oranges and reds.   
The sky warmed up too, pink and orange and red and white, each color brighter than the last. 

“Wow,” Evan whispered. His eyes were wide and he was smiling, this big huge toothpaste ad smile. “This is amazing. How have I never been here before?”

“I don’t know. But I’m glad you got to see it.” Glad he got to be here for this. To take Evan here.

“Me too.” 

Evan didn’t say anything for a long time, and neither did Connor. The sun came up, full force and blinding, and the quiet clearing came to life with the sounds of birds chirping. 

“Why did you bring me here?” Evan asked.

Connor tried to shrug it off. “It’s… You said you liked trees.”

Evan kissed him. Hard. His mouth was warm on Connor’s, his nose cold against Connor’s cheek, his hands sending shivers down Connor’s spine. 

“We probably shouldn’t stay long. I thought I read that it might rain,” Connor said when they broke apart.

“Yeah. Okay. Sure.”

“Good.”

“Great.”

“Awesome.”

* * *

 

They didn’t leave. They kept saying that they ought to go as clouds rolled in, but they didn’t leave. Instead, Evan said something about how he hadn’t climbed a tree since summer and by then Connor had literally followed him up into it, complaining all the way. 

“I’m…. not a fucking boy scout,” He panted, finally getting himself up onto a branch he could sit on. He didn’t love heights. But he loved the way Evan was smiling at him.  

He was really abusing the word “love” today.    


“You weren’t?” Evan asked him.    


Connor frowned, figuring he ought to explain, “Well I was until second grade. The whole Mrs. G. incident sort of made cub scouts less fun.”   


Evan nodded, understanding. “I’m an Eagle Scout.” Evan smiled a little bit to himself. “But I got my Eagle Award freshman year and immediately quit.”   


“Why?”   


“Because camping normally requires you to be around other people, and that’s really all it is after a while,” Evan shrugged.    


“Fair enough,” Connor smiled.    


They sat apart in the tree, sort of looking at each other. Connor had a splinter in his palm, but he didn’t care. Evan was smiling to himself. He looked… calm. Relaxed. Happy, even. 

Connor wished he was able to look that way all of the time.    


“It looks like it might rain,” Evan said, looking up at the cloud again.    


Connor couldn’t consider the idea of leaving. He started moving, taking a seat again even higher up. “So…Tell me about apple trees.”   


“Oh. Um.” Evan shrugged. “Well. They are technically part of the rose family.”   


“Really?” Connor wasn’t being facetious or asking to feign interest. He really didn’t know roses and apples were related. He really liked that Evan knew it.    


Evan nodded, smiling.  “They are.” There was a leaf tangled in the front of Evan’s hair, and he brushed it out absently. “And the seeds are poisonous. But only if you each a lot of them.”   


“Really?”   


“Yeah. They’ve got cyanide in them.”   


“Weird.” A moment passed. And Connor caught Evan looking toward to the ground. And Connor felt so so stupid for taking him here, letting him into a tree. Because he had said something about jumping, and said he’d fallen out of a tree.  _ Fuck _ . He needed to say something, help Evan, convince him that… that it was bad. That jumping out of a tree, off of a water tower, wasn’t an option for him. “So. When you broke your arm…”   


Evan looked away quickly.   


“You said you’d jumped when you tried before.” Connor tried to keep his voice steady. “And then you said you fell out of a tree. So. Did you fall or… did you let go?”   


Evan shrugged, but it was… sad. Awkward. It was an answer that Connor suspected Evan wasn’t prepared to answer. “You can tell me,” Connor said, softly.   


“I let go…” Evan sniffed. He didn’t look at Connor. “It was stupid… I obviously wasn’t high up enough.”   


“I’m sorry,” Connor said sincerely.   


“Why?”   


“Because… I just am. I’m sorry you’ve felt that way.” Fuck, Connor realized. He’d used past tense. He tried again. “Sorry you feel that way.”   


They looked at each other for a long, long moment. But then, Connor felt a raindrop. Then another and another. “Damn, I think it’s starting to rain.”   


“Yeah,” Evan rasped.

Evan started climbing down, and Connor followed, awkward and clumsy, gathering two more splinters as he climbed. The second that his feet touched the ground, the sky opened up, dumping buckets of rain down on them. Evan grabbed Connor’s hand, starting to jog toward the car, but Connor stopped. 

And. 

This was the last rainstorm he would ever get caught in. And Connor just. Wanted a second to. Enjoy it. 

He tilted his head up, cold rain splattering against his face, droplets getting caught in his eyelashes, hair getting soaked.     


“What are you doing?” Evan called, laughing a little.   


Connor shrugged, not knowing how to explain. Not wanting to either.    


The sky lit with lightning and thunder followed. Evan kept laughing, saying, “Come on! You just had the flu, you can’t be dancing in the rain!”

Connor nodded. He stopped, picking up the blanket he’d brought, now soaked and muddy. Evan grabbed the thermos, and the pair of them took off running toward the car. Evan jumped the fence easily, and Connor teased him about looking like a hurdle jumper on the track team. 

“Come on, go start the car,” Evan said, smiling, and grabbing the blanket to stow it in the trunk. Connor did start the car, but then he rounded the front, meeting Evan outside the passenger  door.    


Connor smiled at Evan, stupidly, and Evan was smiling and laughing, asking just what he was doing. “Have you ever seen one of those cheesy movies where the romantic leads have some big disgusting kiss in the rain?” Connor asked him.   


“Yeah.”   


“Well…”    


Evan’s smile was so brilliant and beautiful that Connor thought maybe all of the stupidity and misery of his life so far might have been worth it. Just for this. 

He kissed Evan, and Evan wound his hands into Connor’s wet hair, and the rain poured around them. They just held onto each other, clinging tightly, kissing until Evan’s teeth started to chatter.    


“Come on.”

They clamored into the warm car. The front of Evan’s hair was glued to his forehead, and his cheeks and lips were flushed.    


“Let’s go back to my house,” Evan said, suddenly. “We can stay in bed all day.”   


“I probably shouldn’t…” Connor said, frowning. “My parents are still fighting.”   


“I’m sorry.”   


This was the last time Connor would see him. He should cut it loose now. Clean break. 

Evan’s fingers were cold when he reached over to take Connor’s hand. “Actually… screw them. I want to come with you.”   


“You’re sure?”   


“It’s not like it could possibly get any worse.”

Connor had never been in love before, but he imagined it usually wasn’t quite so… sad. So wounding. So raw. People who fell in love went on to be happy. They didn’t leave boys notes to say goodbye and steal their drugs and kill themselves. They didn’t. 

It wasn’t normal. And Connor knew better than to be doing any of the things he was. Getting closer, holding hands, letting himself drift off against Evan’s warm skin. 

But Connor Murphy was a reckless kid. And it didn’t matter what he kept telling himself, he was desperate just for a little more time, a little more closeness. He had to spend a long long time to convince himself to untangle his limbs from Evan’s, to pull away from the warmth of Evan’s skin, from the cocoon of blankets and pillows, to draw back his fingers, intertwined with Evan’s. His hands shook when he swiped the pills.

Connor didn’t know what had him so scared just then. Was it that he’d die tomorrow? Was it that he might never see Evan again? Was it both or something else, another deeply buried nugget of hurt and pain that his brain had held onto for the last eighteen years? He was afraid of those things in his brain. He worried they weren’t true; or sometimes he feared that they were. 

Like this whole love thing. He couldn’t make heads or tails of that. 

But.

Evan looked less worried in his sleep, Connor realized. There was still a crease in his forehead, between his eyebrows. 

Connor thought Evan would have wrinkles. 

If Connor got his way at least. 

Someday Evan would have wrinkles. 

Connor leaned over and kissed the crease lightly. 

And left the boy he loved. Because it was better this way. It had to be better. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **If you're sitting here thinking, this fic is marked complete but there was no water tower scene... you're correct. That scene is part of a oneshot I posted last year called "Fixated On One Star."**  
>  You can read it by clicking "next work" below.
> 
> Title is from Panic! at the Disco's "Northern Downpour." There is a reference to Dodie Clark's "Intertwined" as well.
> 
> My friend did a beautiful cover of Northern Downpour which you can listen to here. https://soundcloud.com/troubadette/northern-downpour-panic-at-the-disco-cover

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my Egg Squad family, who remind me every day how lucky I am to know them, and to all of you readers for making the last year a fantastic surprise. <3


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